The concept for developing the Institute For Healthy Farming can be traced back to 1984 when a 21 year old Australian dairy farmer made a trip to England and organised an appointment to see Lady Eve Balfour at her home in Suffolk. The author and Lady Eve only spoke for a relatively short time, but it was enough to sow the seed of a simple message - healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people. That was the "organic" movement's message in a nutshell.
Prior to the author's departure back to a farm in Australia, I took Lady Eve's advice and visited Wholefoods at Baker Street in London, for I was wanting to purchase some second-hand or new books on organic farming. On arrival I met some wonderfully committed people and found a small "library" of second-hand books that had slowly been accumulating there, as the staff were collecting them for sale, but at that time there were few serious buyers. I looked through all the second-hand books and asked, to the astonishment of the staff, if I could buy the lot. It was a considerable amount of money back then, for I had just completed a farm apprenticeship on my parent's property. From my first trip to England I met a lady who pointed me in the right direction, purchasing the accumulated knowledge of dozens of authors from Darwin through to Howard. This was the foundation from which my farming career and ultimately this Internet site on Healthy Farming Systems is based.
Principal
Gwyn Jones
GradDip Sust Ag UNE, MRur Mgmt Studs Syd
P.S. I went on to become a Bio-dynamic farmer, got out of farming for health reasons and have gone on to have the privilege of joint lecturing with individuals such as Hugh Lovel. Another highlight was being a workshop leader at Victoria's first inaugural Organic and Biodynamic Viticultural Workshop, which was highly successful. My aim over the next twelve months is to write a book on developing a healthy farming system in a step by step approach, which can be read independently without having to attend a course.
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