Arthur Ashby

Arthur Wilfred Ashby, CBE (19 August 1886 – 9 September 1953) was a British agricultural economist.

Early life Arthur Wilfred Ashby was born on 19 August 1886, the eldest son of Joseph Ashby (1859–1919), a farmer and surveyor, and his wife Hannah (née Ashby; born c. 1861). The son of an unmarried servant, the elder Ashby spent his life working in agriculture in Tysoe, Warwickshire, eventually farming over 200 acres of land. His colourful life involved active participation in politics; he campaigned for the reform of land-ownership and smallholdings. As one biographer said "His life was remarkable, encapsulating in many aspects the ideal of the self-improving working man, and embracing most of the institutions—the nonconformist chapel, trades unionism, and working-class Liberalism—that so clearly represented social and political betterment in the later years of the nineteenth century".

Career Education Like his father, the younger Ashby attended the National School in Tysoe, but left just before he turned 12 to work with his father to help him farm, survey the land and carry out his religious and political activities. In 1909 he enrolled at Ruskin College, Oxford, as a Charles Buxton Scholar and, after two years of study, left with a diploma in economics and political science. In 1912, he received a scholarship from the Board of Agriculture and attended the Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics at Oxford and then the University of Wisconsin as an honorary fellow in political science. He was also a founder of the International Conference of Agricultural Economics and its vice-chairman from 1949 to 1952. He contributed to a wide range of academic journals and gave important speeches at conferences relating to his field. He was an expert on milk-production and was instrumental in the establishment of the Milk Marketing Board, while also serving from 1924 on the Agricultural Wages Board.

Personal life, local service and death In 1922, Ashby married Rhoda, daughter of John Dean and Rhoda Bland, and they had one son. Never quite at ease with other academics, Ashby has been described as a "shy, reserved person with a touch of the suspicious caution of the typical countryman", but also as a helpful tutor with a good sense of humour. He inherited a radicalism from his father which manifested itself in support for the Labour Party, while his local commitments included service as a Justice of the Peace successively in Cardiganshire (1940–46) and Oxfordshire (1946–53). He died in Oxford on 9 September 1953 aged 67.