Free Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London by Frank Tayell Page B

Most quotes are. The book was written in the 1960's and is about a post-apocalyptic dystopian society surviving in a tower block and, as the story progresses, in underground farms beneath it. Each chapter advances the story five years, and at the end, well, no, I won't spoil it, you might want to read it someday.
    It's an interesting enough book, an allegorical take on isolationism, but what's grabbed my attention are the ideas on farming. In the story, since the inhabitants are trapped inside with no access to land, and with their only resource being the light constantly streaming through their windows, they turn to hydroponics. They make a good fist of it too, but I think only because the author wanted generations who'd never been outside to grow old enough to rule.
     
    What I’m wondering is how we're going to manage farming in the days to come. It's March now. Isn't that when crops should be planted? Who exactly is going to do the planting?
    My focus was always on getting people out of the cities. Evacuees like my tenants, at least the ones who made it to an enclave would have found themselves crammed into a warehouse, church, community hall, pub, shop or whatever other space was available and not absolutely essential to our immediate survival. They could look for a hotel room, or even a spare room in someone's house to stay in, but they wouldn't find one. By the time they reached Folkestone they would have found those taken by the evacuees from the nearby villages and towns deemed too difficult to re-supply or defend.
    Housing Officers were appointed from the ample stock of now redundant civil servants to ensure that every room was being used. Hotels, B&B's, dining rooms, summer-houses, even garages. If it had a roof over it and plumbing within walking distance then someone could sleep there.
    Families were to be kept together, and were to be billeted in the schools, this would allow some teaching to take place, but as the teachers were able bodied adults more useful in other work, the lessons would be taken by those too old to wield a shovel.
    Sports centres would become hospitals staffed by evacuees, though they wouldn't have the resources to provide anything other than the most rudimentary level of care. The largest of the restaurants were to become kitchens for the masses, at least for the first few weeks and months until the situation had stabilised and everyone had been secured. It was hoped that after a week or so each house, or group of families could allocate a cook who would take on the responsibility for catering to the twenty or thirty people they lived with. People had to improvise, everyone was in the same situation, facing the same hardships and the same dangers and everyone would have to work together.
     
    Once everyone was within the enclaves then the redistribution would begin. A mass forced migration of labour, both skilled and unskilled, some to the inland farms, some to the Irish Republic and the Scottish Islands, some to the Isles of Man, or Wight. Others would be conscripted into either a fishing industry that I can only hope will provide enough for this first year, or the overseas reclamation operations, scouring the ruins of foreign civilisations for anything that can be salvaged.
    There were some areas, such as between Lostwithiel and Wadebridge in Cornwall, where the rivers Fowey and Camel create a narrow stretch of land where defensive walls were to be built. The area inside this perimeter, once it had been secured would be turned into a single massive intensive farm. Ancient hedges were going to be removed, the concrete ripped up and replaced with fields saturated with whatever pesticides and industrial fertilisers could be found. How the wall was to be built, and what with, I do not know. It surely can't be beyond us, can it?
     
    Inland farms where supplies could come in and out by helicopter were to be fenced in. They were meant to be selected during that second week, between the