Agriculture in the United Kingdom fund the purchase as a mortgage. The Council could not refuse without the Minister of Agriculture's permission. In 1919 the Board of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food were merged to form the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, which later became the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). MAFF was in turn the predecessor of DEFRA. Before the Second World War started, Britain imported 55 million tons of food a year. By the end of 1939, this had dropped to 12 million, and food rationing was introduced at the start of 1940. It did not completely end until July
Credit rationing mechanism of monetary policy. Drawing on the famous Oxford surveys of businessmen in the 1930s he argued that it was likely that changes in the interest rate did not have a substantial effect on investment decisions. Harrod went on to argue that the main channel through which interest rates curtailed economic activity was through the process of what is now known as credit rationing. He wrote that: "It is essentially the imperfection of the capital market that makes monetary policy a powerful weapon." Credit rationing Credit rationing is the limiting by lenders of the supply of additional credit to borrowers