The necessity during the war of encouraging the production of food at home led to the Corn Production Act, 1917, which provided for control by the Ministry of Agriculture of cultivation, the constitution of an Agricultural Wages Board to fix minimum rates of wages for persons employed in agriculture, and for guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats. Minimum rates were fixed, and from time to time varied. Although the Board did not wipe out wholly the pre-war county agricultural wage-differentials, they very largely reduced them—the final percentage of increase varying from about 110 per cent. to 230 per cent. over pre-war. After the Armistice, the Government wisely realized it would be a mistaken policy to try and continue to fix minimum prices for oats and wheat, or to control cultivation and regulate wages. When wholesale prices broke in 1921, and the community became unable to pay the minimum prices, the Government decided it would be unsound finance to maintain prices and wages out of a national subsidy. In war-time it may be right to compel farmers to grow wheat and oats because of the country’s needs—it is wholly wrong to do so in peace-time—the right policy is to leave them to cultivate their land as they, in their own interests, think fit. Government’s New Policy in 1921 The Corn Production Acts (Repeal) Act, 1921, was thereupon passed. That Act abolished minimum prices and wages, created a special fund of £1,000,000 for agricultural development, and provided that the Minister of Agriculture as respects England and Wales, and the Board of Agriculture for Scotland as respects Scotland, should be empowered to take steps to secure the voluntary formation of local Joint Conciliation Committees, representative of persons (whether owners or occupiers of agricultural land) employing persons in agriculture, and of agricultural workpeople, for the purpose of dealing with rates of wages, hours of work and conditions of employment. The Act provides that a rate of wages agreed upon by a Joint Conciliation Committee, and on the Committee’s application, confirmed by the Minister and duly advertised, becomes the wage legally payable in the area, unless the Committee certifies that under the special circumstances of a particular case it is satisfied that a contract for a lower rate is fair and reasonable, or, in the event of the Committee refusing so to certify, the Court in which proceedings are taken for the recovery of the rate agreed by the Committee is so satisfied. The Establishment of Joint Conciliation Committees in England and Wales