Nor have the activities of the state been confined to the promotion and finance of research. Until the mid-nineteenth century most European states attempted to ensure their food supplies by protecting their farmers against imports of grains, by controlling the quality of bread, and by forbidding the export of grain when home supplies of grain ran short. From the middle of the
nineteenth century free trade spread from Britain to many parts-but not all-of the world. However, from the 1930s Britain, the main food importer-and the United States, the main exporter-both began to defend their farmers against low prices and imports of cheaper foodstuffs. In the United States attempts to both control surplus output and to maintain farm
incomes ultimately benefited farm incomes, whilst the federal government bought and stored output that could not be sold. In Britain the import of food continued unimpeded, but until the early 1970s home farmers were paid guaranteed prices, not the market prices. In Western Europe the Common Agricultural Policy has established guaranteed prices for most farm produce
and taxed imports from outside the EEC. Whatever the objections to these interventions by the state, farmers have been relatively prosperous in the last 40 years; without this prosperity, they would not have invested in the many farm improvements that have greatly increased output and productivity since 1945 (Fite, 1981; Tracy, 1982).