How did all of this irresolvable controversy begin over something
that should be scientifically obvious? About 1900, "experts"
increasingly encouraged farmers to use chemical fertilizers and to
neglect manuring and composting as unprofitable and unnecessary. At
the time this advice seemed practical because chemicals did greatly
increase yields and profits while chemistry plus motorized farm
machinery minus livestock greatly eased the farmer's workload,
allowed the farmer to abandon the production of low-value fodder
crops, and concentrate on higher value cash crops.
Perplexing new farming problems--diseases, insects and loss of seed
vigor--began appearing after World War 1. These difficulties did not
seem obviously connected to industrial agriculture, to abandonment
of livestock, manuring, composting, and to dependence on chemistry.
The troubled farmers saw themselves as innocent victims of
happenstance, needing to hire the chemical plant doctor much as sick
people are encouraged by medical doctors to view themselves as
victims, who are totally irresponsible for creating their condition
and incapable of curing it without costly and dangerous medical
intervention.
Farming had been done holistically since before Roman times. Farms
inevitably included livestock, and animal manure or compost made
with manure or green manures were the main sustainers of soil
fertility. In 1900 productive farm soils still contained large
reserves of humus from millennia of manuring. As long as humus is
present in quantity, small, affordable amounts of chemicals actually
do stimulate growth, increase yields, and up profits. And plant
health doesn't suffer nor do diseases and insects become plagues.
However, humus is not a permanent material and is gradually
decomposed. Elimination of manuring steadily reduced humus levels
and consequently decreased the life in the soil. And (as will be
explained a little later) nitrogen-rich fertilizers accelerate humus
loss.
With the decline of organic matter, new problems with plant and
animal health gradually developed while insect predation worsened
and profits dropped because soils declining in humus need ever
larger amounts of fertilizer to maintain yields. These changes
developed gradually and erratically, and there was a long lag
between the first dependence on chemicals, the resulting soil
addiction, and steady increases in farm problems. A new alliance of
scientific experts, universities, and agribusiness interests had
self-interested reasons to identify other causes than loss of soil
humus for the new problems. The increasingly troubled farmer's
attention was thus fixated on fighting against plant and animal
diseases and insects with newer and better chemicals.
Just as with farm animals, human health also responds to soil
fertility. Industrial agriculture steadily lowered the average
nutritional quality of food and gradually increased human
degeneration, but these effects were masked by a statistical
increase in human life span due to improved public sanitation,
vaccinations, and, starting in the 1930s, the first antibiotics. As
statistics, we were living longer but as individuals, we were
feeling poorer. Actually, most of the statistical increase in
lifespan is from children that are now surviving childhood diseases.
I contend that people who made it to seven years old a century ago
had a chance more-or-less equal to ours, of surviving past seventy
with a greater probability of feeling good in middle-and old age.
People have short memories and tend to think that things always were
as they are in the present. Slow but continuous increases in
nutritionally related diseases like tooth decay, periodontal
disease, diabetes, heart disease, birth defects, mental retardation,
drug addiction or cancer are not generally seen as a "new" problem,
while subtle reductions in the feeling of well-being go unnoticed.
During the 1930s a number of far-seeing individuals began to worry
about the social liabilities from chemically dependent farming. Drs.
Robert McCarrison and Weston Price addressed their concerns to other
health professionals. Rudolf Steiner, observing that declines in
human health were preventing his disciples from achieving spiritual
betterment started the gentle biodynamic farming movement. Steiner's
principal English speaking followers, Pfeiffer and Koepf, wrote
about biological farming and gardening extensively and well.
Professor William Albrecht, Chairman of the Soil Department of the
University of Missouri, tried to help farmers raise healthier
livestock and made unemotional but very explicit connections between
soil fertility, animal, and human health. Any serious gardener or
person interested in health and preventive medicine will find the
books of all these unique individuals well worth reading.
I doubt that the writings and lectures of any of the above
individuals would have sparked a bitter controversy like the
intensely ideological struggle that developed between the organic
gardening and farming movement and the agribusiness establishment.
This was the doing of two energetic and highly puritanical men: Sir
Albert Howard and his American disciple, J.I. Rodale.
Howard's criticism was correctly based on observations of improved
animal and human health as a result of using compost to build soil
fertility. Probably concluding that the average farmer's weak
ethical condition would be unable to resist the apparently
profitable allures of chemicals unless their moral sense was
outraged, Howard undertook an almost religious crusade against the
evils of chemical fertilizers. Notice the powerful emotional loading
carried in this brief excerpt from Howard's _Soil and Health:_
"Artificial fertilizers lead to artificial nutrition, artificial
animals and finally to artificial men and women."
Do you want to be "artificial?" Rodale's contentious _Organic Front
_makes readers feel morally deficient if they do not agree about the
vital importance of recycling organic matter.
"The Chinese do not use chemical fertilizers. They return to the
land every bit of organic matter they can find. In China if you
burned over a field or a pile of vegetable rubbish you would be
severely punished. There are many fantastic stories as to the
lengths the Chinese will go to get human excremental matter. A
traveler told me that while he was on the toilet in a Shanghai hotel
two men were waiting outside to rush in and make way with the
stuff."
Perhaps you too should be severely punished for wasting your
personal organic matter.
Rodale began proselytizing for the organic movement about 1942. With
an intensity unique to ideologues, he attacked chemical companies,
attacked chemical fertilizers, attacked chemical pesticides, and
attacked the scientific agricultural establishment. With a limited
technical education behind him, the well-meaning Rodale occasionally
made overstatements, wrote oversimplification as science, and
uttered scientific absurdities as fact. And he attacked, attacked,
attacked all along a broad organic front. So the objects of his
attacks defended, defended, defended.
A great deal of confusion was generated from the contradictions
between Rodale's self-righteous and sometimes scientifically vague
positions and the amused defenses of the smug scientific community.
Donald Hopkins' _Chemicals, Humus and the Soil_ is the best, most
humane, and emotionally generous defense against the extremism of
Rodale. Hopkins makes hash of many organic principles while still
upholding the vital role of humus. Anyone who thinks of themselves
as a supporter of organic farming and gardening should first dig up
this old, out-of-print book, and come to terms with Hopkins'
arguments.
Organic versus establishment hostilities continued unabated for many
years. After his father's death, Rodale's son and heir to the
publishing empire, Robert, began to realize that there was a
sensible middle ground. However, I suppose Robert Rodale perceived
communicating a less ideological message as a problem: most of the
readers of _Organic Gardening and Farming _magazine and the buyers
of organic gardening books published by Rodale Press weren't open to
ambiguity.
I view organic gardeners largely as examples of American Puritanism
who want to possess an clear, simple system of capital "T" truth,
that brooks no exceptions and has no complications or gray areas.
"Organic" as a movement had come to be defined by Rodale
publications as growing food by using an approved list of substances
that were considered good and virtuous while shunning another list
that seemed to be considered 'of the devil,' similar to kosher and
non-kosher food in the orthodox Jewish religion. And like other
puritans, the organic faithful could consider themselves superior
humans.
But other agricultural reformers have understood that there _are_
gray areas--that chemicals are not all bad or all good and that
other sane and holistic standards can be applied to decide what is
the best way to go about raising crops. These people began to
discuss new agricultural methods like Integrated Pest Management
[IPM] or Low Input Sustainable Agriculture [LISA], systems that
allowed a minimal use of chemistry without abandoning the focus on
soil organic matter's vital importance.
My guess is that some years back, Bob Rodale came to see the truth
of this, giving him a problem--he did not want to threaten a major
source of political and financial support. So he split off the
"farming" from _Organic Gardening and Farming _magazine and started
two new publications, one called _The New Farm_ where safely away
from less educated unsophisticated eyes he could discuss minor
alterations in the organic faith without upsetting the readers of
_Organic Gardening._