Organic Farming

History of Organic Farming

The terms sustainable and organic are relatively new, but the practices are not. In fact, organic farming in many respects represents a return to older, unconsciously agroecological land stewardship practices as a response to the introduction of agrochemicals in the early 20th century.

There are an estimated 30,000 organic farms in the United States. This organic farmer in San Juan Bautista, California, is consulting with a horticulturalist (right) about the condition of red chard planted among a variety of crops.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service/Scott Bauer

As plants began to be shipped around the world for cultivation and the global trade in food found its feet in the 19th century, diseases and foreign pests became serious problems for growers. Removed from their native habitats, natural checks and balances were dislodged, leaving plants more vulnerable to the ravages of nature's forces. Oranges, for example, are not native to California, and varietal importation has brought in many citrus diseases with no natural predators, such as the deadly cottony cushion scale. Chemical research from government agencies and university institutes offered a seemingly ideal solution to battling such pests: chemical warfare. With chemicals, diseases that lived in the soil could be eradicated, rather than forcing farmers to let the land lie fallow, or without crops, for years. At the same time, farmers, such as California's citrus growers and the cotton plantation owners of the south, began to focus on monoculture (single crop) production for the sake of efficiency. World competition was fierce, and a farmer could make more money by focusing on the tools, markets, and labor needed for only one crop. The result was more or less an ideal breeding ground for pests, with ample food sources and little, if any, predatory dangers. Farmers were more vulnerable than ever to diseases and pests and turned ever more readily to synthetic solutions. Today an estimated 5.6 billion pounds of pesticides are used every year worldwide. In turn, the large-scale use of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides has created resistance to the chemicals, rendering them useless against certain genetic immunities. There has been a tenfold increase in pesticide use since 1945, and between 1946 and 1948, U.S. production of synthetic fertilizers grew from 800,000 tons to 17 million tons. However, during this same time, crop losses doubled. Internationally, over 250 varieties of plants were estimated to be herbicide-resistant in 2004, with the United States housing the majority of those plants.

...