Barrowsgate hears that the new farming minister is well acquainted with the farming industry but can’t help noticing that the weather has been particularly bad for farmers ever since he took office.
Context: In January 1939 Reginald Dorman-Smith had become Minister of Agriculture. As a former president of the National Farmers Union himself, Dorman-Smith was very close to the farmers’ lobby and represented their interests in the cabinet. In October 1939, Dorman-Smith would instigate the Government’s Dig for Victory campaign, aimed at increasing food production from allotments. During the war, Dorman-Smith was opposed to the “nutritional” approach under which university-educated experts would instruct farmers in how to obtain maximum yields from their lands, saying in November 1939 “once we fall into the nutrition trap we are sunk”. In general, Dorman-Smith tended to champion traditional farming methods.