Friend Sykes

Friend Sykes (1888–1965) was an English organic farmer and writer.

Life

Sykes was a breeder of livestock and racehorses. In 1935, he purchased the Chantry estate, near Andover.

Sykes was a founding member of the Soil Association. Sykes, Lady Eve Balfour and George Scott Williamson organized a founder's meeting on 12 June 1945, in which about a hundred people attended. The Soil Association was founded a year later. The use of compost and manure to improve soil was important to Sykes' approach to farming. Sykes and Frank Newman Turner's organic farming emphasized ploughless soil cultivation, green manure, organic soil cover and ley farming.

Friend Sykes was sometimes confused with Frank Sykes, a farmer who also wrote books on agriculture for Faber and Faber. Food, Farming and the Future (Faber and Faber, 1951) Modern Humus Farming (Faber and Faber, 1959)