The agrarian interests of politician William Hillier Onslow (1853-1911), fourth earl of Onslow, led to his briefly becoming a cabinet minister as president of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1903-5, but he became convinced that the government of the day took no real interest in farming and food - to the extent that in 1914, sixty per cent of British food was imported. He had already decided that English landowners should, at a time of agricultural depression, help the labourers on their estates by making allotments of land available to them, and he published this work in 1886, in the hope of achieving a voluntary extension of the allotment system. It provides a historical context, examines in detail the current situation, and discusses the pros and cons of voluntary versus compulsory ceding of land, while providing insights into the development of the allotment movement.
