The Land and Its People

Rowland Prothero, Baron Ernle (1851-1937) was an author, land agent and politician, whose public career was particularly concerned with agricultural matters. During the First World War he served as President of the Board of Agriculture, organising a significant increase in agricultural production by bringing more land into cultivation and mobilising the labour of the Women's Land Army and prisoners of war. As food shipping from overseas was increasingly interrupted by enemy submarines, this was vital to the national food supply, and many of his reforms were reinstated in 1939-1945. The Land and its People was published in 1925, and examines the rural economy at a time of great change. He outlines the social and economic history of agriculture in the nineteenth century, before discussing the recent wartime policies, and how state control of agriculture and the application of scientific methods were changing British farming.