Edward Roberts Bradfield, son of Thomas Bradfield and his wife Eliza Juliana Turvey, owned a property named "Benvorlich", which was expropriated for the construction of the Indwe-Maclear railway in 1906. Two years later he drew attention to the danger of erosion in the Karoo as a result of unscientific farming methods in an article entitled "Erosion and desiccation of the Karoo", which was published in the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of Good Hope (1908, Vol. 33, pp. 657-659). In May the next year he attended the First South African Irrigation Congress, held at Robertson, and delivered a paper on "The erosion of the veld and the conservation of our natural resources". The paper was published in the Proceedings of the congress.
A few years later he, with 40 others, responded in writing to the question "Is South Africa drying up?". Their letters were published in the Agricultural Journal of the Union of South Africa (Vol. 6-8) during 1913-1914. Subsequently Bradfield and Dr Ernest Warren* wrote a paper on "The pressing need for the protection of indigenous forests and for afforestation in South Africa", which was published as a pamphlet (1918?, 8 p).
Bradfield was married to Alice Anne Jones, with whom he had four children.
