Eve Balfour

Lady Evelyn Barbara 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. Biography Balfour was one of the six children of Gerald, 2nd Earl of Balfour, and Lady Elizabeth Edith "Betty" Bulwer-Lytton, daughter of the 1st Earl of Lytton (former Viceroy of India). She was the niece of former prime minister Arthur J. Balfour. She decided at the age of 12 that she wanted to be a farmer. At the age of 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 at Manor Farm ploughing fields. 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, at the suggestion of family friend William E.G. Palmer of Haughley, she and her sister Mary bought New Bells Farm in Haughley Green, Suffolk, using inheritance monies put into a trust by their father. In 1939, she launched the Haughley Experiment, the first long-term, side-by-side scientific comparison of organic and chemical-based farming. She later became Chairperson of Haughley Parish Council for many years and organised Air Raid Precautions in the village. She campaigned vigorously against the payment of tithes to the church and was in opposition to the Vicar of Haughley, the Rev Walter Grainge White. 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.