Organic

Organic food and farming developed through the 20th century in response to crises in the farmed environment and technological innovations in farming and food technologies. Organic food and farming is based on not using nitrogen fertilizers, synthetic pesticides or insecticides, prophylactic antibiotics, artificial hormones, or genetically engineered plants or animals. Instead of using these technologies, the farm is managed to ensure that fertility is gained with compost, manures and leguminous plants, companion planting, and encouragement of natural predators. Plant-based insecticides are used to control insects, with homeopathy and less-intensive production techniques used to secure animal welfare. To ensure that organic food is produced in accordance with the principles and ethos of the organic movement, farms and food processors are inspected and certified, allowing the product to display a logo indicating its organic status.

Instead of using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, organic products, such as these cauliflowers, are managed to ensure that fertility is gained with compost, manures, and leguminous plants; companion planting; and encouragement of natural predators

Source: Doug Wilson/U.S. Department of Agriculture

Organic farming, according to its proponents, is better for the environment because it encourages a complex ecosystem on the farm and uses fewer natural resources. Organic food, it is argued, is healthier because of the absence of chemical residues and the presence of trace minerals and chemicals missing from nonorganic products.

The origins of the organic movement lie in two separate, and initially independent, developments in Germany and the British Empire in the first half of the 20th century. [Page 384]During the 1920s, the Life Reform movement in Germany brought into question the use of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture and sought to find a method of producing agriculture more in tune with nature. Simultaneously, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, delivered a series of lectures on agriculture that were developed into biodynamic agriculture. This perspective on organic farming requires the farm to be as closed a system as possible, with wastes and nutrients returned to the farm, but adds a cosmological dimension whereby various preparations are used to optimize the soil and crops of the farm. In the British Empire, the encounter of Western agricultural science with traditional Indian farming practices led to the development of a vision of agriculture that sought to nurture the ecosystems of the soil and valued traditional agriculture. This perspective argued that nitrogen fertilizers destroy the ecosystem of the soil, and therefore undermine the health of the plants, animals, and humans dependent on it. Albert Howard, then a prominent British agricultural scientist, argued that proper soil management with composts based on animal manure and plant matter would maintain the health of the soil and those reliant on it. Howard had little time for the mystical ideas of Steiner, labeling them “muck and magic,” while promoting his own ideas as based in science.

Despite some interest within the leadership of Nazi Germany, the organic movement there foundered, leaving the British movement as the fulcrum of the heart of the movement. The most prominent proponent of organic agriculture was Lady Evelyn Balfour, who after hearing the arguments of Balfour and his associates, undertook to start a comparative experiment on her own farm at Haughley, Suffolk, England. Balfour's plan was a farm-scale trial managing one set of fields with “artificials,” one left fallow, and the other organically. The outbreak of World War II led to many of those who had been experimenting with organic farming and food in the previous decade to record their experiences. It was at this time that the term organic began to be used by the movement, rather than terms such as compost or humus farming. Balfour's account of her experiment, The Living Soil (1943), catalyzed the networks into thinking about an organization that they could form at the end of the war. The Soil Association was founded in 1946, with the direct purpose of promoting organic farming and food, as well as the evidence necessary to underpin it. The association sought in the following years to coordinate the organic movement across the planet and manage Balfour's research at Haughley. At this time, the organic movement began to gain a foothold in North America with a number of experiments being undertaken, the most prominent of which were those of Jerome Rodale. Rodale had read the work of, and then entered into a correspondence with, Albert Howard in the early 1940s. He began to publish a magazine, Organic Farming, and to offer scientific research funding to those prepared to investigate organic agriculture.

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