TheSoil Association is a Britishregistered charity focused on the effect of agriculture on the environment.[3] It was established in 1946.[4] Their activities include campaigning forlocal purchasing, public education on nutrition and certification oforganic foods, and againstintensive farming.[5]
Lady Eve Balfour (niece of former British Prime MinisterArthur Balfour) was one of the first women to study agriculture in a British university. She and her sister Mary bought New Bells Farm at Haughley Green in Suffolk and started theHaughley Experiment, trialling different types of farming techniques to compare chemical and organic farming.[6]
The Haughley experiment was the first formal, side-by-side farm trial to compare organic and chemical-based farming.[7][8][9] It was based on an idea that farmers were over-reliant on fertilizers, that livestock, crops and the soil should be treated as a whole system and that "natural" farming produced food which was in some way more wholesome than food produced with more intensive methods.[10] Lady Balfour believed that humanity's future and human health were dependent on how the soil was treated, and ran the experiment to generate scientific data that would support these beliefs.[11]
Lady Balfour then published results in 1943 in her bookThe Living Soil. Reprinted numerous times, it became a founding text of the emerging organic food and farming movement and of the Soil Association.[12]
Lady Eve Balfour,Friend Sykes andGeorge Scott Williamson organized a founders' meeting for the Soil Association on 12 June 1945 and about a hundred people attended.[13][14] The association was formally registered on 3 May 1946,[15] and in the next decade grew to over 4,000 members.[16]
It was also founded in part due to concerns over intensive agriculture and in particular the use ofherbicides.British Union of Fascists memberJorian Jenks, who was closely associated withOswald Mosley, was one of the founders. Following Jenks' death in 1963, the association tilted towards the left of the political spectrum, especially under the new president,Barry Commoner.[17]
^White, Kim Kennedy; Duram, Leslie A (2013).America Goes Green: An Encyclopedia of Eco-friendly Culture in the United States. California: ABC-CLIO. p. 176.ISBN978-1-59884-657-7.
^Macklin, Graham (2007).Very deeply dyed in black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the resurrection of British fascism after 1945. I.B.Tauris.ISBN978-1-84511-284-4.
Conford, Philip (2011),The Development of the Organic Network: Linking People and Themes, 1945-95, Floris Books,ISBN978-086315-803-2
House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (2008),Eleventh Report of Session 2007-08(PDF), The potential of England'srural economy, vol. I Report, together with formal minutes, London: The Stationery Office Ltd, retrieved16 August 2010
House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (2008),Eleventh Report of Session 2007-08(PDF), The potential of England's rural economy, vol. II Oral and written evidence, London: The Stationery Office Ltd, retrieved16 August 2010Google books preview (Report contains submission from the Soil Association, p. 197)
