SIR CHARLES FIELDING

FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE

LAST WAR

Sir Charles Fielding, Director-General of Food Production, 1918-19, and late chairman of the Rio Tinto Company, died at Ingfield Manor, Billingshurst, on April 9.

Born on October 4, 1863, Charles William Fielding, son of the late Mr. T. M. Fielding, was educated at Dover. As the owner of 3,000 acres in West Sussex, 1,500 of which he farmed, Fielding had for many years, from before the last War, been a foremost advocate of the movement for the increased home production of food. Politicians, in his view, alwyays treaLed agriculture as a Cinderella-and he made constant efforts to correct that attitude in national policy. He wrote much on agricultural subiects, including a remarkable ,book entitled

' Food," which w,as published in 1923. In it he emphasized that a prosperous and progressive -agriculture was a fundamental asset in stability. He' aimed at educating the urban dwellers to a realization of the necessity of a greater measure of independence in the matter of food supplies.

In 1934 he published a pamphlet in which he set out a plan for making the United Kingdom -more self-supporting in foodstuffs and manufactures. He estimated that to produce the cereals, beef, pigmeat, and sugar then imported would require an additional 5,000,000 acres of ploughland and that employment could usefully be found on the land for an additional 1,250,000 able-bodied workers.

During the last War the Rio Tinto Company, of which Sir Charles Fielding was a director and later chairman, supplied the Allies with pyrites. at pre-1914 prices. In 1917 he was chairman of the economy of Metals and Materials Committee of the Ministry of Munitions and he also served on the Council of the Ministry of Reconstruction, as a member of the Non-Ferrous Metals Committee of the Board of Trade, as a member of the Government Restriction of Imports Committee, and on Lord Milner's Committee on the Production of Food in 1915. In 1906 he had been a member of the committee which established the College of Science of Technology. He had exceptional powers of organization and great financial ability, and those qualities combined with his long business experience enabled him to give invaluable service to his country in the last War. In 1917 he was created K.B.E.

He married, in 1900, Florence, daughter of Mr. J. Willis Dixon, of Hillsborough Hall, Sheffield, and had a son and two daughters.