André Voisin

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André Voisin (born January 7, 1903 in Dieppe , † December 21, 1964 in Havana ) was a French biochemist and farmer . His best-known work is “The Productivity of the Pasture” ( Productivité de l'herbe ) from 1957, which deals with the sustainable management of pasture land and has been translated into numerous languages.

Life

Voisin was born in Dieppe in 1903 into a family of relatively wealthy farmers. He completed his education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. After military service in the French Navy, he graduated in 1924 in biochemistry from the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris . In the following years he worked as an engineer in the rubber industry. In 1936 he studied the German language in Heidelberg .

During the Second World War Voisin served again in the French Navy. In 1940 he was evacuated to Great Britain, where he briefly served as an attaché in the admiralty of the Forces françaises libres . In the same year he returned to France to farm his family's land; meanwhile he supported the Resistance . In 1943 he married Martha Rosine Fernagu.

After the end of the war, Voisin turned completely to agriculture. He has published several books mainly concerned with the efficiency and sustainability of pasture farming. He pays special attention to the behavior of farm animals and their impact on the vegetation . His work received international attention and he went on numerous lecture tours. From 1956 he was a private lecturer at the École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort .

Although Voisin was not politically close to socialism , he accepted an invitation from Fidel Castro to the University of Havana in 1964 . There he began a series of lectures on December 8th and received an honorary doctorate on December 11th. On December 21, André Voisin suffered a heart attack and died in Havana, where he was also buried.

Works

  • The productivity of the pasture. Munich, FSVO, 1958
  • Soil and plants: fate for animals and humans. Munich, FSVO, 1959
  • Lively sward. Munich, FSVO, 1961
  • About the connection between the health of modern humans and the health of the soil. Cologne, Westdeutscher Verlag, 1962
  • The cow and its pasture. Munich, FSVO, 1962
  • The pasture tetany. Munich, FSVO, 1963

Individual evidence

  1. ^ André Voisin ( Memento from July 21, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Voisin, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French biochemist and farmer
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Dieppe
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1964
Place of death Havana