Dr. Thomas (Tom) Batey BSc PhD CBiol FIBiol FISoilSci 1933- 2025
Tom Batey, passed away, aged 92 years, peacefully after a 4-month illness on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, beloved husband of Beth, loving dad to Dan and to his late eldest son Jamie and grandad to Ewan and Elena.
Tom was raised on a tenant farm in Northumberland at Broomhill Farm in West Woodburn until moving to Gilchesters at Stamfordham in 1939. He studied agriculture specialising in soil chemistry at King’s College, University of Durham in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. While working on the home farm, he completed a Ph.D. at King’s College on the productivity of hill land in Northumberland, including the Fell Sandstone soils near Rothbury and the Andesite soils of the Cheviots.
He started his career working at ADAS (NAAS as it was then) in 1959 as an Advisory Soil Scientist initially based in Cambridge. He rapidly gained a reputation for the field examination and diagnosis of soil problems, with special interest in soil structure, soil compaction and crop nutrition. In 1964, Tom was promoted to head of Soil Science in southern England, headquartered in Reading, where land restoration, assessment of land quality and nitrogen requirements were his main interests.
In 1971 he moved to the University of Aberdeen as a Senior Lecturer in Soil Science teaching soil management and land use at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He spent two months teaching a postgraduate course at the University of Santa Maria in Brazil, plus a short scientific visit to lecture in Uruguay, in 1974. He also spent 6 months in New Zealand with his family in 1980, taking sabbatical leave to teach at the University of Canterbury.
After early retirement from the university in 1988, he began working independently as a soil management consultant to industry and farming, with particular emphasis on land restoration, land use and the management of arable soils. CM writes – Having learnt my soil management from Tom, I was still truly surprised at the kind of detailed advice Tom was able to give when we gave a joint course to onion growers in East Anglia – both on identifying problems and how to manage wet or damaged patches.
During this time he worked for major farming groups in Eastern England, the Czech Republic, and Poland. The assessment of soil compaction directly in the field became a specialty, particularly related to the installation of gas and oil pipelines throughout the UK. Installers needed advice on how to avoid soil damage when inserting pipes and farmers needed legal support where there was soil damage due to poor installation or inadequate storage or replacement of soil. His work also took him to Australia running workshops for farmers and advising on the production of irrigated cotton and dryland grain crops.
In 1988 Tom published ‘Soil Husbandry: A practical guide to the use and management of soils’ and over his career wrote over 100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. He also wrote a fascinating booklet about his early years entitled ‘A Country Bairn: Experiences of life and work on a family farm 1933-1959’. Tom noted in this latter publication that ‘His career as a soil scientist took him to many countries but always close to those who gain a living from the land.’
Tom was active in the British Society of Soil Science and a keen advocate for the establishment of Soil Use and Management in 1985, also serving as an assistant Editor. He served as President of BSSS in 1993-1994, where he helped smooth the transition of the house Journal of Soil Science to the European Journal of Soil Science and helped in the development of the Institute of Professional Soil Scientists.
Tom had a great interest in the visual evaluation of soil and its application. He was active within the International Soil Tillage Research Organisation (ISTRO). One of his most impactful achievements for ISTRO was pioneering the establishment of ‘Working Group F: Visual Soil Examination and Evaluation’ within ISTRO in 1983.
He collaborated with David McKenzie (after 1996), Bruce Ball and Lars Munkholm (after 2003) on the development of visual soil examination techniques. This work in promoting field examination methods for describing soil quality allows farmers and advisors to track the progress (improvement/degradation) of soil structure as a function of soil management. Pat Hulme continues to promote Visual Evaluation of Soil Structure (VESS) (Ball et al. 2007) as an extension tool for Australian farmers and advisers. BB is indebted to Tom for his wise advice in developing ideas and methods over their 50 years of knowing each other. VESS is extensively used in Brazil where it is actively promoted by the current convenor of the Working Group F: Visual Soil Examination and Evaluation, Dr Rachel Guimarães.
In his later years he loved to meet and share with fellow retired soil scientists over coffee and continued to referee papers. Tom will be sadly missed by his many friends and colleagues, but particularly by his beloved wife Beth and their son Dan and his family. Tom was a kind, practical, articulate and inspiring man who will be long remembered for his exceptional ability to clearly explain to farmers and their advisers how to recognise and profitably manage the physical constraints to topsoil and subsoil function.
Bruce Ball, Chris Mullins, Bryan Davies and ISTRO working group members
Publications (selected):
- Batey: Soil Profile Description and Evaluation 2000: Ch15 in ‘Soil and Environmental Analysis Physical Methods. Taylor & Francis Group.
- Ball, B.C., Batey, T. and Munkholm, L. 2007. Field assessment of soil structural quality – a development of the Peerlkamp test. Soil Use and Management 23: 329-337.
- Soil & Tillage Research Volume 127, March 2013: Special Issue, ‘Applications of Visual Soil Evaluation’. Eds. LJ Munkholm, BC Ball, T Batey.
- ‘Visual Soil Evaluation: Realising potential crop production with minimum environmental impact’, CABI, 2015. Eds. BC Ball and LJ Munkholm.
- Batey, T. 2009. Soil compaction and soil management – a review. Soil Use and Management 25: 335-345
- Batey, T. 2015. The installation of underground pipelines: effects on soil properties. Soil Use and Management 31: doi:10.1111/sum12163
