Asociación de Suelos

Lady Eve Balfour (sobrina del ex primer ministro británico Arthur Balfour ) fue una de las primeras mujeres en estudiar agricultura en una universidad británica. Ella y su hermana Mary compraron New Bells Farm en Haughley Green, Suffolk, y comenzaron el Experimento Haughley , probando diferentes tipos de técnicas agrícolas para comparar la agricultura química y la orgánica. ^{[ 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 book The 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 and George 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] It shared an office at Hyde Park Mansions with the Pioneer Health Centre, and also shared the Pioneer office manager Mary Langman and secretary Amy Moor, because Williamson and Innes Pearse were key members of both organisations.^[16] In the next decade the Soil Association grew to over 4,000 members.^[17]

The Soil Association was also founded in part due to concerns over intensive agriculture and in particular the use of herbicides. British Union of Fascists member Jorian Jenks, who was closely associated with Oswald 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.^[18]

The association was one of the five bodies which in Versailles in 1972 formed the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements to act as the umbrella organisation to advocate for organic farming.^[19]