Sectoral shifts in supply, wartime agriculture edition

It is all the more remarkable, then, that within six years Britain’s agricultural output had transformed, more profoundly and at a faster pace than any time since the start of the Industrial Revolution.  The most urgent need was to provide a substitute for all that previously imported foreign wheat.  In 1939, Britain only had 11.8 million acres of suitable land under the plough, compared to 17.3 million acres of grass and pastureland.  Four years later those figures had been almost exactly reversed — to 17.3 million and 11.4 million acres respectively.  The amount of tillage soil devoted to wheat had doubled.  Just over 4.2 million harvested tons of wheat, barley and oats had become 7.6 million tons.  By 1943 the potato crop was almost twice as big as it had been in 1939.  Less pastureland meant fewer animals, and so a veritable massacre on pork and poultry farms ensued.  By 1943 there were almost 30 million fewer British chickens and 2.2 million fewer pigs than pre-war numbers.  Cows were spared — but strictly for milk production, not beef.

That is from the new and excellent book by Alan Allport, Advance Britannia: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1942-1945.