Colin Fraser, author of Harry Ferguson: inventor and pioneer and other books, died in Italy on Monday 12th September.
Colin Fraser was born in England in 1935, and educated in England, Canada and Switzerland. He qualified as an agriculturalist and became a lecturer and instructor on Massey-Ferguson farm tractors and equipment.
Colin developed a profound admiration for this excellent machinery. As he describes in the Introduction to Harry Ferguson, he never met his subject and so "was faced with the task of forming an impression of Ferguson as a man by talking to people who had known him and worked with him, and by reading his correspondence. Thus I travelled in Engalnd, Ireland, the United States of America and Canada to search out people and obtain their recollections of fact, and their opinions, about Ferguson. I was fortunate indeed to meet with co-operation everywhere I went; all the surviving people who had played a significant role in Ferguson's life gave of their time to talk to me. I interviewed a total of sixty-two people and recorded more than 160 hours of tape with them."
The divergent accounts of the interviewees were to plague Colin during his writing of the biography; and the task was only slightly eased by the papers at Ferguson's home, Abbotswood - in all, 150 solidly packed boxes. The result, first published by John Murray in 1972, is recognised as the pre-eminent biography of any farming pioneer.
Colin then became one of the early developers in applying communication media and processes to overseas development, promoting attitudinal and behavioural change among small farmers. For seventeen years he ran operations in this field for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation before, in 1984, becoming a consultant working for most of the main development agencies. Colin’s work took him to more than 60 countries, often, he said, "thrashing around in the bush".
He also found time to run a small commercial vineyard and wine-producing operation in Italy, with wines in all the main Italian and international wine guides. Colin learned to ski when he was two years old and became devoted to ski-ing and ski-mountaineering.
In later years Colin spent half his time in Colombia and half in Italy. He leaves a widow, Sonia Restrepo Estrada, and two sons, Stuart and Iain, as well as six grandchildren.
July 2000, after lunch at Grantchester, Cambridge. Left to right: Colin, Sonia, Sue Gibbard, Stuart Gibbard and Lesley Smith.
Books by Colin Fraser
The Avalanche Enigma, 1966 (later updated as Avalanches and Snow Safety).
Harry Ferguson: inventor and pioneer, John Murray, 1972, Old Pond, 1998
Lifelines for Africa - Peril and Distress, 1988
Communicating for Development: human change for survival (with Sonia Restrepo Estrada), 1998
Working with Bacchus, 2005
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