Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Hello, Barry and welcome. To all:  what I asked was what's wrong with this
picture - Origins of Organic Agriculture in the U.S. 

I have a real big problem with the whole idea. It's really only about the
term organic and it's origin. But it rarely occurs to anyone that we didn't
have chemical fertilizers and pesticides before the 20th century, and
Americans ALL grew organically before that, not to mention literally
millions of native Americans who farmed and gardened organically for
centuries right here. But that's not important - or is it? How on earth did
they get by without superphosphate, ammonium nitrate, Roundup, and all the
other poisons? They did, and they did very well without them. And half the
food staples we enjoy today were farmed and developed by the indigenous
populations. After all, you can't live on nothing but wild game. 

But that's not all. A lot of European immigrants were growing organically
and using surprising techniques they brought from the Old Country, well
into the 1970's and beyond. My partner Barb testifies to the fact. With her
father she saw first hand the gardens of other immigrants (both her parents
came from Italy) - Italians, Poles, Czechs, Russians, Hungarians and others
in Connecticut and in Brooklyn. She recalls her surprise at the time seeing
how they all grew the same way, and had for generations in the Old
Countries. No chemicals, no synthetic fertilizer, no fungicides. They *did
not dig* their gardens but got good, healthy food production. They all
covered their beds with composted manure or composted leaves or other green
matter. And they kept permanent beds with set walkways between. Different
ethnic groups didn't all grow the same plants, but they definitely did it
the same way. Barb explains she worked their own garden the same way with
her father. 

Now how many of these practices are touted as the latest and greatest idea
in organic gardening? How many  books have been sold without crediting the
knowledge of indigenous peoples or practices brought from many other
countries and cultures? And how much have we actually lost?

I posted several articles about and by Emilia Hazelip, leading up to just
this. 

In The Synergistic Garden, http://www.fukuokafarmingol.info/faemilia.html
the organic practices Emilia described are eerily similar to Barb's
experience with all the immigrant gardens she saw in the 1970's in
Connecticut and Brooklyn. No-till, no fertilizer or sprays, permanent beds
and walkways, and so on. Plants simply put in wherever there's room for
them, succession planting, companion plants. Emilia was not satisfied with
Fukuoka or Mollison after studying with both. She learned from Fukuoka,
Mollison, Chadwick, Ruth Stout, and others in the late '60s. She taught
these ways in France and finally even in Italy. Yet in the remote village
Barb's mother came from near Potenza, that's just the way people gardened
for centuries. No books, no experts, no foundation funding. Ordinary people
using their own good sense, passed down generations. Barb says learning to
garden is a lot like learning to cook - best taught one on one, passed down
the generations. Recipes just can't teach it all. 

I gotta hand it to Ruth Stout. She wrote in 1960 that someone once accused
her of thinking she invented mulch. Her answer was, God invented mulch. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
listowner

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 10/22/2006 at 8:05 PM tech-terra organics wrote:

>What would you like to add to it?
>I believe the author is a professor at Rutgers University who works with 
>soil fertility.
>
>I've been lurking for awhile. I live in NJ, and am working with landscape 
>companies helping them reduce pesticide & synthetic fertilizers by using 
>organic products to improve the soil & plant health
>.
>Barry Draycott
>Tech-Terra Organics, LLC
>609-468-1905
>techterra@comcast.net
>
>Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
>Albert Einstein
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2006 11:38 AM
>Subject: [Livingontheland] Organic Agriculture in the United States
>
>
>
>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.
>