Catalogue description Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and predecessors: Trade Relations and International Affairs: Correspondence and Papers

This series relates to the measures taken by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and its predecessors to regulate imports of agricultural produce into the United Kingdom following over-production by the exporting countries and the consequential world surpluses in the 1930s. It also relates to the measures taken to secure stability of prices as a result of price depression and deflation in certain of these countries. It contains papers relating to the steps taken to protect home-producers by the imposition of import duties and quotas, and to the preferences afforded to countries within the British Empire.

Files illustrate the activities of the ministry and its predecessors in the international field including relations with League of Nations Committees, World Economic Conferences, Imperial Economic Conferences, and the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation; also papers dealing with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The series includes some files of the General Department of the Board of Trade.

The series contains some IT files re-registered from MAF 276

For records on International Cereals and Wheat agreements see MAF 308

For records on international statistics see MAF 396