Agricultural History Review, Volume 46 Part 2 (1998), pp. 197–210

This article identifies the New English Weekly, a review of economic, political and cultural issues which ran from 1932 to 1949, as the most important publication in the development of the British organic husbandry movement. It defines this movement and summarizes its various strands, including concern about health and nutrition, rural reconstruction, de-forestation, and the dangers of a mechanistic approach to natural processes, all of which were to be found in the New English Weekly. The article concentrates on those strands most concerned with agriculture, and on the period from the outbreak of war to the paper's closure, a decade which saw the movement coalesce and define its philosophy of husbandry. A study of the New English Weekly during this period demonstrates that all the major figures in the organic movement could be found in its pages as it dealt with questions of farnfing policy and food production; the consequences of mechanization; the threat of soil erosion and dwindling fertility; and methods of restoring and maintaining the soil's humus content. Although the paper was not primarily aimed at a farming readership, many of its contributors became founder members of the Soil Association. The years following the New English Weekly's closure saw agricultural policy develop in an entirely different direction from that which it had advocated, but it had played a central role in establishing an environmental philosophy which would make itself heard more strongly from the 1960s onwards. 

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