My latest book The British Police and Home Food Production in the Great War: Police as Ploughmen, 1917-1918 is published by Palgrave Macmillan at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-58743-6.
It contains chapters on:
- The developing food crisis in the First World War. Why Britain experienced a food crisis and how it compared with other combatant nations.
- Help for farmers; no stone left unturned to help them. How the British government nationalised farming and provided large amounts of help from a wide variety of groups, some of which were inexperienced in farming and of little help initially.
- Horse and mechanical help for farmers. How manual ploughing with horses was the most widely used method, although steam ploughing was the most efficient. The introduction of petrol-driven tractors and the problems of the many types with their untested nature on different types of soil resulted in frequent breakdowns.
- The importance of increased crop production to feed the nation. The diets of the majority of the population and why an increase in crop production was more important than rearing cattle on pastureland.
- Policemen in England helped farmers from March 1917 to the end of the war. Giving the locations and numbers of policemen released.
- Policemen in Scotland helped farmers from March 1917 to the end of the war. Giving the locations and numbers of policemen released.
- Release of policemen in Birmingham and Glasgow: 2 case studies. These examples show the tensions surrounding the release of policemen into agriculture to feed the nation; and
- The outcomes for Britain of the food shortages of 1917. Why it helped the police to release their men into a protected industry and the results of the food production campaign.
