Benefits of Organic Farming

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Most people do not understand where the food they eat comes from and under what conditions it is grown or raised. If more people were aware of the differences in organic verses conventional farming, they would be able to make more informed choices.  Growing up on a small farm and having understanding of agriculture has impacted the food choices I make. Unfortunately, most of the population has not been exposed to any kind of farming, let alone organic farming. My research has indicated that most of the farming techniques I was exposed to during my childhood were on par with organic farming methods used today.  Looking back at the origins of the “organic” concept it is very ironic that the advance of technology has had an adverse effect on food production. 

 The first thing one should know is that organic farming is by no means a new concept, just the name. It was simply one of the only ways of farming that was performed before the 1840s by most responsible farmers. The artificial fertilizers and pesticides found today were not used because they did not exist. Farmers understood the natural link between the soil, produce, and livestock.   They also knew if they did not nurture the land and soil, that they would not be able to successfully grow the foods; they required to survive each year.

 A prime example of what can happen with irresponsible farming practices was in 1930s. Most of us are of familiar with the Dust Bowl.  For over ten years the southern Plains were devastated. The farmers had not rotated their crops. They also over-plowed and over-grazed the land. When the drought struck there was no ground cover and all the top soil blew away:

 “The "Yearbook of Agriculture" for 1934 announces, "Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production. . . . 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil. . . " (Nelson).

 The amount of money spent by the government to help recover from this disaster was staggering; just between the years 1933 and 1935 it was well over 725 million dollars. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and were forced to vacate the area. The consequences of the Dust Bowl lengthen the Great Depression and its effects were felt around the world (Nelson). If we do not start making major changes in our farming practices and utilization of the land it is apparent that eventually we will eventually exhaust our resources.  Hopefully, as more people understand the organic movement we will start moving in a new direction.

The organic movement began roughly in the 1920s in with Sir Albert Howard, a British Agricultural scientist, being the most influential. He was very much at odds with the beliefs of German chemist Justus von Liebig, who advocated the use of chemical fertilizers in the 1840s. Howard was one of many that felt that the industrialization of the world, and the advent of artificial means of farming, was not the best course of action. He was concerned about the long term effects of the complete disregard for the land. He believed in working with nature and that the health of the soil was directly related to the quality of the produce grown. 

 Howard postulated that composted soil improved plant health. “The maintenance of soil fertility is the real basis of health and resistance to disease,” he wrote in An Agricultural Testament, published in 1940. In contrast, the Leibig method of chemical fertilizers “is based on a complete misconception of plant nutrition. It is superficial and fundamentally unsound…Artificial manures lead inevitably to artificial nutrition, artificial food, artificial animals, and finally to artificial men and women” (Fromartz, 2006, p. 9).

There have been many other organic pioneers along the way. In 1907 British Major General Robert McCarrison spent seven years in India, working among the Hunzu people. He found out there were few of the diseases and health problems common to the general population in the Hunzu people. Their diet was based on consuming foods grown very similar to the ways that are considered organic today. The diet included whole wheat, lentils, legumes, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and a small amount of meat.