Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), pp. 135–153

The Farm Management Survey was a sample survey set up by the Ministry of Agriculture to assess the level of farm incomes in England and Wales. It continues to the present day as the Farm Business Survey. The article sets the original Survey in its intellectual context, pointing out that Britain was a relative latecomer to such survey work, and explains why civil servants in the 1920s and 1930s thought it important to have the data that it produced. It traces the initial difficulties encountered in establishing the Survey and follows its subsequent development through the Second World War and into the 1960s, pointing out that the surviving fieldbooks and summary forms constitute an invaluable source for agricultural historians of the wartime and post-war periods. 

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