Soil Association - History

History

The Soil Association was formally registered on May 3, 1946, and in the next decade grew from a few hundred to over four thousand members. The founding members comprised notable figures from various fields, including doctors, dentists, farmers, journalists, engineers and horticulturalists.

According to their website: "The Soil Association was founded in 1946 by a group of farmers, scientists and nutritionists who observed a direct connection between farming practice and plant, animal, human and environmental health."

"The catalyst was the publication of The Living Soil by Lady Eve Balfour, the sister of a Prime Minister, in 1943. The book presented the case for an alternative, sustainable approach to agriculture that has since become known as organic farming."

The Soil Association was founded in part due to concerns over intensive agriculture and in particular the use of herbicides. A comparison between the two forms of farming in 1939 was called the Haughley Experiment. The headquarters of the Soil Association used to be at the nearby Haughley Green in Suffolk.

One of the founders of the Soil Association was Jorian Jenks, a former member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), closely associated with Oswald Mosley. Jenks was for years the editorial secretary of the Association's journal "Mother Earth". During the late 40s the Association involved far-right and even antisemitic elements, remnants of the defunct BUF, and was driven by far-right political ideas as much as ecological concerns. Following Jenks’ death in 1963, the Association tilted towards the left of the political spectrum, especially under the new president of the Association, Barry Commoner.

The Soil Association was one of five like-minded associations that founded the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in 1972 in Versailles, France, to act as the umbrella organisation to advocate for the global uptake of organic farming.