Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Anyone find fault with this history? Aren't we forgetting something?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------

The Origins of Organic Agriculture in the United States
excerpt from this page http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/organiccrop.html

As close as anyone can determine, the first use of the term "organic" (in
this country, anyway) was in 1940. J.I. Rodale coined it in an article for
the publication Fact Digest.(5) Shortly thereafter, he launched Organic
Farming and Gardening (OFG) magazine — for many years the flagship
publication of Rodale Press. Along with OFG, Rodale Press published (and
continues to publish) a large number of books and booklets on organic
agriculture. For a long time the publishing house was the most highly
visible and accessible source of information about "non-chemical" farming
and gardening in the U.S. As such, it was probably the single greatest
influence on the shape and underlying philosophy of mainstream organics.
J.I. Rodale drew his concept of organic agriculture from a number of
sources, including Louis Bromfield (the author of Malabar Farm and other
books on conservation farming), Dr. William Albrecht (from the Department
of Soils at the University of Missouri), and the Biodynamic movement.
However, his key ideas about farming came from the British agronomist
Albert Howard. Howard worked in the foreign service in India during the
first quarter of the 20th century, and much of what he preached about
agriculture came from his observations and experiences in that part of the
world.

In his landmark books, An Agricultural Testament (6) and The Soil and
Health (7), Howard pointed to emerging problems of animal and plant
disease, soil erosion, and similar conditions. He laid the blame for these
on mismanagement of soil. Howard specifically cited the failure of modern
civilizations to properly return wastes from cities and industries to the
farms. Sustainability issues were at the top of the list for this man, now
considered the "father of organic agriculture."

Clearly, Howard did not believe that reliance on chemical fertilization
could address these concerns. He thought it a misguided approach —the
likely product of reductionist reasoning by "laboratory hermits" who paid
no attention to how nature worked.

Howard promoted a natural approach to building soil and fertility. He wrote
in great detail about the use of deep-rooting crops to draw nutrients from
the subsoil, about managing crop residues, and about green manuring.
However, Howard gave the lion's share of his attention to composting. The
Indore Process, which he was responsible for popularizing, is exemplified
today by the basic layered, bin composting system that is the standard in
organic gardening.

In America, Rodale expanded on Howard's ideas. In his seminal book on
organic agriculture, Pay Dirt (8), he identifies a number of other "good
farming practices" — like crop rotation and mulching — that gave
further definition and clarification to what have become accepted organic
practices and inputs. This is important because organic farming embodies
the elements of a sound agriculture — traditional practices that have
been proven over time. In fact, a good, convenient, working definition for
organic agriculture is good farming practice without using synthetic
chemicals. This working definition distinguishes organic practice from the
general milieu of agriculture that existed in the pre-chemical era, much of
which was exploitative and unsustainable. Organic farming was never
intended to be a "throwback" or regressive form of agriculture.

A truly significant event in the history of organics took place in 1962,
with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.(9) Silent Spring is
a strong and dramatic statement about the impact of pesticides on the
environment. It was one of the key documents that gave birth to
environmental consciousness in the 1960s and 1970s.