continue. The "basal diet" advised was a mixture of vegetables (especially potatoes), bread, fats (butter and cooking fats), milk and oatmeal. The "basal diet" that was imposed was made possible by extensive rationing. As Agriculture minister, Hudson strove to make British farming more productive to make up for the food shortages caused by the U-boat campaign. In April 1939, Britain had imposed peacetime conscription for the first time ever in British history, and to make up for the farmers conscripted, the Women's Land Army had been created in June 1939. Upon becoming Agriculture Minister, Hudson played a major role in expanding the Women's Land Army to send thousands of "Land Girls" to the countryside to work the farms. Many of the "Land Girls" as women serving in the Women's Land Army were called complained that their efforts were not being taken seriously and that the male civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture treated them in a very patronising fashion. The stories of the contempt that the "Land Girls" were being shown drove down the number of women willing to join the Women's Land Army. Hudson argued that with many British farmers and farmhands serving in the military that the "Land Girls" were essential to provide the necessary workers to expand the productivity of British agriculture and ordered his civil servants to be more respectful of the "Land Girls". Besides for the "Land Girls", Hudson had German and Italian POWs; Jewish refugees; serviceman on furlough who had been farmers before the war; conscientious objectors; and volunteers from the cities all put to work on British farms. Hudson especially favored the use of Italian POWs as rural laborers because many of the many Italian servicemen taken prisoner came from the rural areas of Italy and were experienced farmers. Owing to the disinclination of many Italians to fight for the Fascist regime and serious morale problems in the Italian military, by 1943 British forces had captured over half million Italians, making the Italians easily the largest group of Axis POWs in British custody, vastly outnumbering the German and Japanese POWs. Starting in 1941, Italians captured in the campaigns in North Africa and East Africa were shipped to the United Kingdom to serve as rural labor and by 1944, there were 150,000 Italian POWs working on British farms. Besides the fact that many of the Italian POWs came from rural areas, it was