Britain's £36 million peanut farm harvested less than it planted
A hundred thousand former soldiers applied for the 1,200 jobs in the "Groundnut Army." Warnings about the rainfall and the soil were brushed aside. Bulldozers arrived from Canada and from US Army surplus in the Philippines, much of it too rusted to run. The baobab trees resisted clearing: one served as a local jail, another was sacred to ancestor worship, and many held bees' nests that put workers in the hospital.
- ▪A hundred thousand former soldiers applied for the 1,200 jobs in the "Groundnut Army." Warnings about the rainfall and the soil were brushed aside.
- ▪Bulldozers arrived from Canada and from US Army surplus in the Philippines, much of it too rusted to run.
- ▪The baobab trees resisted clearing: one served as a local jail, another was sacred to ancestor worship, and many held bees' nests that put workers in the hospital.
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Britain's £36 million peanut farm harvested less than it planted Ellsworth Toohey 7:00 am Fri Jul 24, 2026 Tanganyika groundnut scheme — Survey division, dept. lands and mines Tanganyika territory / Public domain (via Wikipedia) In 1946, with Britain still on wartime rationing and short of cooking fat, Clement Attlee's government approved a plan to plant peanuts across 3 million acres of Tanganyika, a stretch of bush roughly the size of Yorkshire, and turn the crop into margarine. A hundred thousand former soldiers applied for the 1,200 jobs in the "Groundnut Army." Warnings about the rainfall and the soil were brushed aside. Bulldozers arrived from Canada and from US Army surplus in the Philippines, much of it too rusted to run.
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