ABSTRACT
The discourse of the need to produce home-grown food, starting in The Police Review in 1916, portrayed the nation as liable to starve unless more food could be produced at home. Government set up local and national bodies that sourced manpower, equipment and fertilisers, so that policemen became temporary ploughmen and farm workers nationwide, and to advise farmers which land they should plough up to create sufficient quantities of prescribed raw materials to feed the people. The discourse of the need to produce home-grown food saw workers from many walks of life substituted for the large number of skilled and unskilled farm workers who had left the home front recruited into fighting the war. The State managed farming through County War Agricultural Committees as the local responsible body, one of their responsibilities being to source farm labour. The discourse of the need to produce home-grown food showed disputes of the exact numbers of agricultural workers recruited into the army.
