Haughley Experiment facts for kids

The Haughley Experiment was a very important study that compared two different ways of farming: organic farming and conventional farming. It started in 1939 in a place called Haughley Green in Suffolk, England. Two amazing women, Lady Eve Balfour and Alice Debenham, set up this experiment on two farms right next to each other.

The Haughley Experiment: A Big Idea for Farming

What Was the Haughley Experiment?

The Haughley Experiment was the first long-term study to compare organic and conventional farming methods. It was based on a simple but powerful idea: farmers were using too many artificial fertilizers. Lady Eve Balfour and Alice Debenham believed that everything on a farm – the animals, the crops, and the soil – should work together as one big system. They thought that farming in a "natural" way would produce healthier food.

Why Was This Experiment Important?

Lady Eve Balfour strongly believed that the future of people and their health depended on how we treated the soil. She started the Haughley Experiment to gather scientific information that would prove her ideas. She wanted to show that organic farming could be a better way to grow food.

However, some experts, like an entomologist named Deborah Stinner, have said that by today's scientific rules, the Haughley Experiment was more like a "demonstration" than a perfect experiment. This means it might not have been strict enough in its methods to draw very strong conclusions. Still, it was a pioneering effort!

What Did They Find?

Even with its challenges, the Haughley Experiment reported some interesting findings:

• The amount of helpful minerals in the soil changed with the seasons. These changes were much bigger in the organic farming areas. The highest mineral levels happened when plants needed them most.
• Plants grown organically had just as many, or even more, minerals inside them. This was true even though the organic plots didn't get the extra mineral inputs that the conventional plots did.
• Animals fed with organic food needed less food (about 12-15% less). They also seemed healthier and lived longer than animals fed with conventional food.
• The organic plots sometimes showed increased yields, meaning they produced more crops.

How Did It End?

The Haughley Experiment ran for many years. Just before it finished in the early 1980s, scientists measured different things in the three sections of the farm. They found differences in how many earthworms were in the soil, how deep crop roots grew, and other soil features. These included soil carbon, moisture, and even, surprisingly, soil temperature.

See also

• History of organic farming
• Long-term experiment