George Stapledon

Sir George Stapledon (1882 to 1960) was a British grassland scientist and pioneer environmentalist. Born at Northam, Devon, he was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, worked for the family firm in Suez, then returned to study biology and in 1910 joined the Royal Agricultural College, where he came to argue that grasslands were at the heart of successful agriculture. He headed a new botany department at the University College of Wales from 1912, worked for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1914 to 1918 and persuaded it to set up a seed testing station. His longest service was as director of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station at Aberystwyth from 1919 to 1942, where he developed new varieties of grass, oats and clover known as S strains that were especially influential in New Zealand. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and knighted in 1939, founded and first led the British Grassland Society, advocated ley farming, and wrote political works such as The Land: Now and Tomorrow.