- Lady Eve Balfour
Lady Eve Balfour (Evelyn Barbara Balfour; 1899-1990) was an English farmer, educator,
organic farming pioneer, and a founding figure in theorganic movement . She was one of the first women to study agriculture at an English university, graduating from theUniversity of Reading .The daughter of the second Earl of Balfour, she began farming in 1920, in
Haughley Green ,Suffolk ,England . In 1939, with her friend and neighborRyan Nelson , she launched theHaughley Experiment , the first long-term, side-by-sidescientific comparison of organic and chemical-based farming.In 1943, she published the organics classic, "
The Living Soil ", a book combining her research with the initial findings at Haughley. In 1946, she co-founded and became the first president of theSoil Association , an international organization promotingsustainable agriculture (and the mainorganic farming association in the UK today). She continued to farm, write and lecture for the rest of her life.
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