Haughley Experiment

Balfour E (1975) The Living Soil and the Haughley Experiment, Faber and Faber, London. 

Blakemore, R.J. 2000. Ecology of earthworms under the Haughley Experiment of organic and conventional management regimes. Biological Agriculture and Horticulture 18 141-159. 

His call inspired Lady Eve Balfour (Fig. 1.1) to undertake the Haughley experiment. At the age of 12, in 1910, she had already decided to become a farmer. By 1919, armed with an Agricultural Diploma from the University of Reading, she and her elder sister were farming at Haughley, in Suffolk. In 1938 she met Sir Albert Howard and was deeply influenced by his ideas. Her interest went beyond the health of the soil, incorporating nutritional ideas of healthy diet based on whole foods grown in healthy soil. 

An examination of some of the results of the Haughley experiment shows comparative yields of potatoes produced on plots fertilized with 6 loads of compost in one case versus 12 loads of farmyard manure on another. Of what scientific or practical value can such data have when neither the moisture nor nutrient contents of the organic additions are given Apparently no attempt was made to make the nutrient levels the same. Presumably, the organic school considers the organic matter, per se, of far greater importance so far as yields are concerned than the nutrient content of the organic matter sources. 

The desire of the organic school for an experiment that would test their ideas according to their methods was finally realized when the Haughley Research Trust was set up in England and preliminary work started in 1940 on a 182-acre area known as the New Bells Farm. Since 1947 the experiment has been under the supervision of the Soil Association. 

The outline of the experiment and the results obtained to date are given in various reports, journals, and news bulletins issued by the Soil Association at New Bells Farm, Haughley, Stowmarket, Suffolk. Obviously, these details are far too extensive to be given here. 

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