More land was needed for food production, and local War Agricultural Executive Committees had been established before the war to find and utilise the great swathes of Essex countryside massed with thorn bushes and untrimmed hedges the size of small copses. Members of the committee visited farms and decided on which fields needed ploughing, with the farmers being paid a grant of £2 per acre as compensation. Inefficient farmers were threatened with eviction, so there was certainly pressure on them to produce the goods. This was also the very beginning of mechanised farming, an essential requirement for some of the heavy clay lands of Essex. Mechanisation slowly helped to boost food production, turning the eastern counties into the ‘granary of England’ with 60,000 additional acres in Essex identified for ploughing by the Ministry of Agriculture. However, between 1921 and 1939, over 20 per cent of farm workers left their jobs in Essex, leaving insufficient labour to provide the increased production that was now necessary.
