Title: War Economy

Author: Baker, J. V. T.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1965, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

Conditions of use

Falling Farm Labour Requirements

The process of mechanisation of farming, with improved methods, was well under way before war broke out. Though it is probable that wartime shortages of labour hastened it, it was by no means a wartime phenomenon. In fact, the underlying situation seems to have been that, both in times of unemployment and in times of labour shortage, mechanisation (and the accompanying improvements in methods) was having a profound effect on farm labour requirements. The situation was reached, probably somewhere around 1940, when the general upward movement in farm output was accompanied by a small but progressive reduction in farm labour needs. That is to say, the amount of labour required to produce each unit of output was falling, and the stage was reached where this fall in labour requirements per unit was fast enough to cancel out the extra labour needs for increasing production, so starting a slow but progressive fall in the overall amount of labour needed on farms.

In contrast, wartime thinking was in terms of steadily increasing farm labour requirements. Early complaints of labour shortage on farms reinforced this view, and there was no statistical information to show the true position. Between the 1926 and 1936 population censuses, the numbers engaged in farm work had increased by nearly a quarter. Employment conditions generally in 1936 differed from those in 1926, but there seems to have been an increase of over 2000 a year in farm labour requirements between these two censuses. The question on farm labour in the annual statistical return from farmers had ceased in 1930, and no other information on farm labour was available. What, then, more natural than to assume that farm labour requirements would go on increasing by about 2000 a year after the 1936 census?

This assumption was to be proved faulty, but the proof came too late to prevent frustrating and costly misjudgments in time of war, when they could least be afforded.

The population census due in 1941 was not taken, and, without it, there is no accurate measure of farm employment in the late thirties or early forties. The 1936 census had shown 148,000 males in farming; the 1945 census showed only 115,000.¹ The 1945 census was taken when there were still 45,000 men, from all industries, in the armed forces. Nevertheless, this inter-censal drop indicated the need for careful re-examination of ideas about farm labour requirements. It no longer appeared reasonable to assume that there had been an increase in requirements, which had been frustrated by armed forces recruitments. The fall in numbers engaged was much greater than the loss to the armed forces.

If the circumstances of the 1945 census left doubts about the matter, the 1951 census, taken at a time when recovery from the war had been reasonably complete, was to remove them, by showing only 117,000 males in farming.

The rapid mechanisation of farming has already been illustrated.¹ Methods generally were being improved and more farm work was being done on a contract basis. Contract work made for a more efficient use of labour and gave a better opportunity for further mechanisation. It considerably reduced the number of men directly employed by farmers.

The reduction in farm labour needs seems to have been fairly general. The most rapid fall was in dairying, but a post-war report on sheep farming includes the following paragraph:²

‘It is also interesting to note that the number of sheep and breeding ewes to one unit of labour has increased greatly in the last thirty years.

‘The doubling of the number of breeding ewes to one labour unit may be ascribed to the fact that dry-sheep numbers have fallen in this thirty year period, being replaced by breeding ewes on the better pastures.’