Lady Eve Balfour

Lady Evelyn Barbara "Eve" Balfour, (16 July 1898 – 16 January 1990) was a British farmer, educator, organic farming pioneer, and a founding figure in the organic movement. She was one of the first women to study agriculture at an English university, graduating from the institution now known as the University of Reading.

Contents

• 2007 lady eve balfour memorial lecture richard heinberg
• Soil Association
• Publications
• References

Balfour, one of the six children of Gerald, 2nd Earl of Balfour, and the niece of former prime minister Arthur J. Balfour, had decided she wanted to be a farmer by the age of 12. At age 17, she enrolled, as one of the first women students to do so, at Reading University College for the Diploma of Agriculture. After obtaining her Diploma in 1917, she completed a year's practical farming, living in 'digs' at 102 Basingstoke Road, Reading. During this time she worked as a ploughman at Manor Farm. She was subsequently appointed Bailiff to a farm near Newport, Wales under the direction of various war committees, notably the Monmouthshire Women's War Agricultural Committee whose Chairwoman was Lady Mather Jackson of Llantilio Court, Abergavenny.

In 1919, at the age of 21 she and her sister Mary bought, using inheritance monies put into a trust by their father, New Bells Farm in Haughley Green, Suffolk. In 1939, she launched the Haughley Experiment, the first long-term, side-by-side scientific comparison of organic and chemical-based farming.

In 1943, leading London publishing house Faber & Faber published Balfour's book, The Living Soil. Reprinted numerous times, it became a founding text of the emerging organic food and farming movement. The book synthesised existing arguments in favour of organics with a description of her plans for the Haughley Experiment.

In 1946, Balfour co-founded and became the first president of the Soil Association, an international organisation which promotes sustainable agriculture (and the main organic farming association in the UK today). She continued to farm, write and lecture for the rest of her life. She is attributed with stating that, "Health can be as infectious as disease, growing and spreading under the right conditions". In 1958, she embarked on a year-long tour of Australia and New Zealand, during which she met Australian organic farming pioneers, including Henry Shoobridge, president of the Living Soil Association of Tasmania, the first organisation to affiliate with the Soil Association. In South Africa, experiments were undertaken by the Valley Trust [1] using Balfour's methods in 1961 and 1962. These subsequently demonstrated that the organic approach was all that was necessary, indeed, that "the people did not need chemicals, which were worse than useless on the dry soil."

She was appointed OBE in the 1990 New Year Honours.