ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the written works of those who set out to relate their own personal experiences of farming, and there were many of these in the 1940s and 1950s, most, if not all, hitherto entirely neglected by agrarian and social historians. It focuses on “working farmers”, a category developed and provides case studies of several writers whose divergent and particularistic voices offer an insight into the drive for food security in war-time and post-war Britain. Given that food security requires productive and successful farmers, the category of writers examined are those who explicitly or implicitly set out with a pedagogic purpose to introduce or prepare would-be farmers to the world of farming. Conford’s history of the origins of the organic farming movement is very much an account of key personalities and their written works. The chapter identifies the factors that brought about the coherence based on a mutuality of interests in post-war Britain.
