Britain's £36 million peanut farm harvested less than it planted

In nineteen forty-six, as Britain struggled with wartime rationing and a cooking fat shortage, Clement Attlee's government green-lit a bold agricultural scheme: planting peanuts across three million acres of Tanganyika — an area roughly the size of Yorkshire — to produce margarine. Per Boing Boing, the venture ultimately harvested less than it planted. All told, the scheme cost Britain thirty-six million pounds.

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