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Fighting Fields

Feeding the nation during wartime

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Description

A promotional film on how to fully utilise land during the war. The film features meat and coal being loaded at the docks; fields and crops; deserted crofts; sampling soil on an allotment; shots of ploughing; laying of pipes; shots of the Women's Land Army at work; allotment holders and women at work on farm machinery; potatoes stacked in clamp; shots of a portable silos for grass.

Questions & Activities

Questions

  • What mood does the film create?
  • What was Britain's old money called and when did we convert to the modern decimal system?
  • Where was food imported from before the war?
  • Why were people being encouraged to eat vegetables?

Activities

The film claims that growing potatoes is the most efficient crop to feed populations. Find out how much land in the world / a particular country is used for different types of farming and discuss the advantages and problems of modern farming.

Conduct scientific soil tests around the school to determine which is the best part of your school to grow vegetables.

Find out what the weekly ration for food was and prepare a tasty and nutritious menu for the week. Compare it with what you typically eat in a week.

Cook a meal using your daily rations.

Watch this film in conjunction with the Ministry of Food Flashes (clips 1, 2 and 3). Produce a multi-media essay/presentation or film about food rationing and the need for growing your own food.

Clip Details

Record Id 007-000-000-089-C
Resource Rights Holder Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
Project Ref 456
Date 1941
Genre Public Information
School Subject History, Religious and Moral Education, Geography, Health and Wellbeing, Science
Subject Matter Citizenship
Who Films of Scotland (sponsor), GB Instructional (sponsor), Ministry of Information (sponsor), Scottish Department of Agriculture (sponsor), Scottish Film Productions (production company), Stanley L. Russell (director)
Where Edinburgh
Event World War II
Attributes Black and White, Sound
Clip Length 10:53
Film Length 10:53