Agricultural History Review, Volume 57 Part 2 (2009), p. 288

The writings of Walter Edward Christopher James (1896–1982) – better known as Lord Northbourne – are not especially well known, although historians interested in the early organic farming movement in Britain may know his 1940 book, Look to the land. Meanwhile those with an interest in the development of British agriculture after the Second World War may have encountered his name as provost of Wye Agricultural College.

A new collection of James’s writings, Of the land and the spirit: The essential Lord Northbourne on ecology and religion, provides an opportunity to gain a taste of his views on a range of topics, including agriculture, spirituality and ecology as well as ‘philosophical’ questions, focusing on the nature of beauty, what constitutes art, the ageing process and how best to live with pain.

The first of Of the land and the spirit’s five sections is devoted to James’s writings on agriculture and includes four abridged essays taken from Look to the land, which was a key text for the early British organic farming movement. Indeed, the editors of this collection assert that it was James himself who coined the term ‘organic farming’, and one of the contemporary organic movement’s most fêted writers, Wendell Berry, has penned the book’s foreword.

Many of the arguments of early organic campaigners, including Gerard Wallop (Viscount Lymington and later Lord Portsmouth), Rolf Gardiner and Eve Balfour, are present in these essays, supporting Philip Conford’s assertion that by the time the Second World War began the organic movement in Britain had developed a coherent set of beliefs and arguments. For example, James writes: ‘The health of man and the health of his land are not two distinct matters … Farming is the external mechanism of human biology; it is an essential part of the process of nutrition’ (p.9). This was one of two key arguments explored by Eve Balfour in her The living soil (1943) and it is also an idea present in Wallop’s writings of the period.

Excerpts from Look to the land emphasize James’s and other organic supporters’ idealism. Those who resisted the industrialisation of British farming dreamed of an agricultural sector driven less by finance and more by beauty and love of the land. James asks:

Is farming merely a necessary drudgery, to be mechanized so as to employ a minimum of people, to be standardized and run in ever bigger units, to be judged by cost accounting only? Or is the only alternative to national decay to make farming something real for every man … and something in which personal care, and possibly even poetic fancy, counts for more than mechanical efficiency? Mechanical efficiency is all very well – it is good, but life can be sacrificed to it (p.21).

The two final agricultural essays included in Of the land and the spirit were written in the late 1960s and mid- 1970s and offer insights into James’s understanding of and unease with ‘modern’ farming. According to his son, who contributes an introduction, James no longer saw himself as a supporter of organic farming when these pieces were written. Nevertheless, he eloquently articulates his concern about the way ‘increasingly all natural rhythms are violated’ (p.57), admitting that ‘I don’t like pumping sheep full of drugs (though they appear to thrive on it); nor killing weeds with hormone sprays (they show every evidence of torture in the etymological sense of the word); nor forcing crop yields to the limit with chemicals’ (pp.59–60).

James’s profound religious belief is clear, even if one chooses not to read the pieces that focus specifically on religion. Less obvious are James’s racialist views, which he held at least for a time. However, a close reading offers some indication of these. An excerpt from Look to the land, written in the late 1930s, includes a discussion about various peoples (all non-European) who were alleged to have achieved perfect health through perfect nutrition. James writes:

They may not have been endowed with the highest potentialities of the human race … [but] within the limits of their potentialities … they have attained … a state of harmony with their environment and with each other … We may flatter ourselves that our potentialities are higher than theirs: that is poor consolation if we allow ourselves to degenerate in peace or to be annihilated in war’ (p.11). The introduction written by James’s son, the fifth

Baron Northbourne, offers useful snippets of biographical information. However, these are rather vague and require checking. Reference is made to James buying a farm in the 1920s with a ‘rowing friend’ from Oxford but ‘when the recession struck they sold out at a loss’ (p.xviii). No location or dates are offered. There is also mention of James following biodynamic methods of organic farming as manager of Home Farm on his family’s estate during the interwar period. He is also described as having been chairman of the ‘War Agricultural Committee’. Given the complex structure of County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAEC), this is much too vague a description; my thanks to Brian Short for confirming that James was chair of two Kent CWAEC district committees and also sat on Kent WAEC’s technical subcommittee. In May 1946, James became chairman of the county committee.

Of the land and the spirit is clearly designed to generate new interest in James as a religious and ecological thinker. For historians, this collection is more likely to offer insights into the role James played as an early organic ideologue as well as, possibly, raising questions about the ambivalence some members of the post-war agricultural ‘great and good’ may have felt about the industrialization of British agriculture.