This is an updated version of a presentation for my Intro to Sustainable Agriculture class that I began assembling in 2010.

1. Organic Agriculture Interview Qs – due next Monday (10/22)
1) Biographical info: age, years as a principal operator, education,
relationship to you
2) What comes to mind when you hear the term "Organic farming"?
3) Do you actually know any organic farmers? If so, please share a
few impressions.
4) Have you ever been to an organic farm? If so, please share a few
impressions
5) How frequently (if ever) do you consume organic food? If you
have consumed organic food, please share a few impressions.
6) If a landlord in your area offered you a very reasonable rent to
farm their quarter section of land organically, how would you
respond?
7) Have you ever considered organic farming? Please briefly explain
your answer.

2. What is organic agriculture???

3. Organic by
neglect
or omission
is guaranteed
to fail!!

4. This was organic farming by neglect!!!
-523,000 tons of N/yr !
(David et al., 2001)
Late 19th century N budget for Illinois
(units are 1000 metric tons N / yr)

5. What did CG
Hopkins
mean by
permanent
agriculture?

6. First 2 sentences of the book

7. Do you remember this sentence from Monday?
Does this describe what you have learned
in your ag classes at WIU?

8. Franklin Hiram King
(1848-1911)
FH King , Professor of Soil
Physics at UW was dismayed
by the rapid degradation of
Midwest soils during the 19th
century and traveled to Asia
looking for answers.
Farmers of 40 Centuries: “ We desired to learn how it is
Permanent Agriculture in possible, after twenty and
China, Korea and Japan perhaps thirty or even forty
centuries, for their soils to be
was the original title.
made to produce sufficiently for
the maintenance of such dense
populations.. “
Farmers of Forty Centuries, 1911

9. First edition
in 1929
JR Smith was a pioneer in the field
of economic geography, an author
of many popular elementary
school – college level geography
text books and a dedicated
conservationist and agro-forester.

11. Sir Albert Howard (1873-1947)

12. Who was Sir Albert Howard?
Although many concepts of organic farming predated
his work, Sir Albert Howard is commonly regarded as
the father of organic agriculture.
He was raised on a farm in England, and educated at
Cambridge University. He served as a mycologist in the
Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies
(1899-1902), before returning to England to teach
agricultural science at South-Eastern Agricultural
College in Wye (1903-1905).

13. He moved to India in 1905 and conducted agricultural research for
twenty-six years before permanently returning to England in 1931.
British Indian Empire
INDORE

14. After returning to England, Sir Albert Howard began
to articulate an alternative system of farming based
on his extenisve research and observations of
indigenous farming practices.
He gave lectures and wrote widely read books about
composting, soil fertility, and relationships between
farming practices and crop, livestock and human
health.
He also became an increasingly fierce critic of
mainstream agricultural science and practice.

15. In An Agricultural
Testament (1940) Howard
laid out his vision for
agriculture based on nature
as a model with great
emphasis on a concept that
is central to organic
farming--the importance of
utilizing organic waste
materials to build and
maintain soil fertility and
humus content.

16. An Agricultural Testament
by Sir Albert Howard
Chapter 1
Introduction
THE maintenance of the fertility of the soil is the
first condition of any permanent system of
agriculture. In the ordinary processes of crop
production fertility is steadily lost: its continuous
restoration by means of manuring and soil
management is therefore imperative.

17. “In the study of soil fertility, the first step is to bring
under review the various systems of agriculture…
These fall into four main groups:
1) the methods of Nature -- the supreme farmer -- as seen
in the primeval forest, in the prairie, and in the ocean;
2) the agriculture of the nations which have passed away;
3) the practices of the Orient, which have been almost
unaffected by Western science; and
4) the methods in vogue in regions like Europe and North
America to which a large amount of scientific attention has
been paid during the last hundred years.”

18. “Little or no consideration is paid in the
literature of agriculture to the means by
which Nature manages land and conducts her
water. Nevertheless, these natural methods of
soil management must form the basis of all
our studies of soil fertility.
What are the main principles
underlying Nature's agriculture?”

19. “Mixed farming is the rule: plants are
always found with animals: many
species of plants and of animals all
live together. In the forest, every
form of animal life, from mammals to
the simplest invertebrates, occurs.
The vegetable kingdom exhibits a
similar range: there is never any
attempt at monoculture: mixed crops
and mixed farming are the rule.”

20. “The soil is always protected from the direct action of
sun, rain, and wind. In this care of the soil, strict
economy is the watchword: nothing is lost. The whole
of the energy of sunlight is made use of by the foliage
of the forest canopy and of the undergrowth.
The leaves also break up the rainfall into fine spray so
that it can the more easily be dealt with by the litter
of plant and animal remains which provide the last
line of defence of the precious soil.”

21. According to what Sr. Albert Howard called the
Law of Return, all organic waste materials, including
sewage sludge, should be returned to farmland.
Recalling his experiences in India, he described the
"Indore" (after a region in India) method of
composting. He prescribed a certain pile size,
temperature, moisture, aeration, and a mix of plant,
animal, urine-soaked earth, and ash as a proper
composting recipe.
Howard stressed a good mix of composting materials
contained residues from both plants and animals.

22. Howard was very concerned about the
increasing overspecialization in
agricultural science -
“learning more and more about less and less”
He tried to broadly investigate how to grow
healthy crops in typical conditions in the field,
rather than the atypical conditions in
laboratories and test-plots.

23. Sir Albert Howard loudly criticized the field plot
and statistical methods used at the Rothamsted
agricultural experiment station. He thought that
these studies were flawed for many reasons e.g.,
continuous cultivation of wheat, use of new seeds
from outside sources and free movement of
earthworms between plots.

24. In Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease (later
published as Soil and Health), Sir Albert Howard introduced
the idea that disease, whether in plants, animals or humans,
was caused by unhealthy soil and that proper farming
techniques would make the soil and those living on it,
healthy.
As evidence he cited his observations that animals fed
with crops grown in humus-rich soil were able to rub noses
with diseased animals without becoming infected.
More generally he argued that the correct method for
dealing with a pathogen was not to destroy the pathogen
but rather to try to learn from it or to "make use of it for
tuning up agricultural practice”.

25. Sir Albert Howard was certainly In 2001, a serious outbreak
rolling in his grave when…
of FMD in Britain resulted in
the slaughter of ~ 300,000
cattle, the postponing of the
general election for a
month, and the cancellation
of many sporting events and
leisure activities.
Due to strict government
policies on sale of livestock,
disinfection of all persons
leaving and entering farms
and the cancellation of large
events likely to be attended by
farmers, a potentially
economically disastrous
epizootic was avoided.

26. Sir Albert Howard studied the traditional farming methods of
India's peasant farmers and the pests and weeds that
conventional agriculturalists were committed to fighting with an
ever-widening array of poisons, but which Howard called his
Professors of Agriculture.
He saw pests in
the context of Nature's
use for them as sensors of soil
fertility and indicators of unsuitable
crops growing in unsuitable conditions.

27. Sir Albert Howard recognized the significance of
Justus von Liebig's writings on agricultural
chemistry but he was a critic.
He thought that Liebig led agriculture astray
when he denounced the humus theory of plant
nutrition and promoted the NPK mentality, i.e.,
the idea that soil fertility could be maintained
entirely through applications of inorganic sources
of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

28. Sir Albert Howard's main concern was that
Liebig focused attention on soil chemistry
to the neglect of soil biology and physics.
Liebig’s prestige and appreciation of the
single-minded focus value of soil organic
on chemistry matter by scientists
led to diminished and farmers.
Sir Albert Howard never lost his appreciation
for soil organic matter and extolled its profound
influence on the health of soils, plants, animals,
and mankind in all of his writings.

29. In Sir Albert Howard's long and distinguished career as a
scientist, he made many significant discoveries related to
many different facets of agriculture including plant
breeding, irrigation, mycorrhizae, soil aeration, fruit tree
cultivation, post-harvest handling of produce, weed
management, and diseases of plants and humans. For
these widely recognized contributions to agriculture he
was knighted in 1934.
As Howard became increasingly critical of conventional
agricultural science, many of his scientific colleagues
began to view his ideas on humus, soil fertility, and
disease as exaggerations of otherwise fundamentally
sound ideas.

30. Sir Albert Howard’s hard-line opposition to the
use of artificial fertilizers is often considered
extremism but is no more extreme than Liebig's
absolute concept of plants using exclusively
inorganic forms of nutrients (which persists in
some modern soil science literature).
Unfortunately Howard's stance on fertilizers
contributed to the common but mistaken
impression that organic farming is simply farming
without the use of synthetic fertilizers and other
agrichemicals.

31. In 1946 (one year before his death), Sir Albert Howard
acted out his role of agricultural contrarian most
explosively in a book titled The War in the Soil.
This book opens with a powerful condemnation:
The war in the soil is the result of a conflict between the
birthright of humanity--fresh food from fertile soil--and
the profits of a section of Big Business in the shape of
the manufacturers of artificial fertilizers and their
satellite companies who produce poison sprays to
protect crops from pests and who prepare the various
remedies for the diseases of livestock and mankind.

32. Although Howard was a passionate advocate of what
is now known as organic farming, he never used the
term organic to describe the system of agriculture
that he promoted.
Lord Walter Northbourne, a British agronomist,
academic (long time Provost of Provost of the
agricultural college of London University), elite athlete
(silver medal in rowing at the 1920 Olympics),
translator, and author of books about agriculture and
comparative religion, was the first person to use the
word organic to describe a method of farming.

33. In 1940, Northbourne
introduced his concept
of the ideal farm as an
organic whole (i.e.
having a complex
interrelationship of
parts/organs, similar
to that in living things)
in a book titled, Look
to the Land.

34. In Look to the Land, Northbourne wrote that
“chemical farming is regulated mainly according to
the combined recommendations of the farm
economist, with his calculating machines and ledgers,
and the chemist”.
He warned that farming should not be “treated as a
mixture of chemistry and cost accountancy, nor can it
be pulled into conformity with the requirements of
modern business, in which speed, cheapness, and
standardizing count most. Nature will not be driven.
If you try, she hits back slowly, but very hard”.

35. Within Northbourne’s concept of organic farming, the
farmer’s role is to coordinate the integrated
components of a farm – so that resource cycling and
self-regulating processes are optimized.
It is important to distinguish this concept of organic
from the common misunderstanding that organic (in
context of organic farming) refers only to the carbon
based chemistry or biological origin of the soil
amendments commonly used in organic farming.

36. When J.I. Rodale, a
successful American
businessman read
An Agricultural Testament,
he was so moved by
Howard’s ideas (he described
the experience as like being
hit by a "ton of bricks“) that
he almost immediately
purchased a farm near
Allentown, PA and began
experimenting with
J.I.Rodale
(1898-1971) composting and organic
farming techniques.

37. Jerome Irving Rodale was born in New York City in
1898, the son of a grocer, and thus was connected
to the food industry but had little to no direct
connection to agriculture while growing up.
He was a very successful entrepreneur who started
out manufacturing electrical switches but
eventually founded a publishing empire (Rodale Inc.
launched in 1930), launched several very successful
magazines (e.g., Organic Gardening, Prevention),
and published many books (including some he
authored) on agriculture, human health and many
other topics.

39. In 1942, JI Rodale began publishing Organic
Farming and Gardening magazine with Sir Albert
Howard serving as the associate editor.
In 1945, JI Rodale's book Pay Dirt, with an
introduction by Sir Albert Howard, introduced
organic farming concepts to a wide audience. For
approximately the next quarter century, JI Rodale
promoted organic concepts with missionary zeal
and probably did more than anyone else to increase
awareness and interest in organic gardening and
farming in the US.

40. Both Sir Albert Howard and JI Rodale saw the conflict
between organic and mainstream agriculture as a
struggle between two different visions of what
agriculture should become as they engaged in a
war of words with the agricultural establishment.

41. The circulation of Organic
Gardening magazine increased
from 260,000 in 1960 to
1,300,000 in 1980 when it was
the most widely read gardening
publication in the world.
Many factors, such as the back-
to-the-land movement, the
growing environmental
movement, and the anti-
establishment social revolution,
were responsible for the
increasing popularity of Rodale
Press publications.

42. These folks probably subscribed to
Organic Farming and Gardening
magazine
This is not me!

43. In addition to writing/publishing magazines and books
about gardening and farming, JI Rodale also launched a
Wellness revolution
In 1950, he founded Prevention magazine to teach
readers how to prevent disease through a healthy
lifestyle and diet versus just treating the symptoms of
disease.
He also wrote books promoting the healthful effects of
exercise and fruit and vegetable rich diets
(e.g., How to Eat for a Healthy Heart).

44. In 1954, the Federal Trade Commission ordered
JI Rodale to stop advertising and selling health
books, claiming that the medical advice given in his
books was unsubstantiated.
JI Rodale engaged in legal battles with the FTC for
almost two decades, at times putting his entire
personal net worth at risk. Over the years, the FTC,
fearing that they would lose their case on
constitutional grounds, attempted to settle with JI
Rodale. But despite financial hardship, JI Rodale
refused to back down unless the FTC agreed to
acknowledge that the First Amendment prohibited
them from regulating books and printed material.

45. In the later years of the case, JI Rodale's lawyers
introduced new testimony from some of the same
leading medical experts that the government
originally used at the initial FTC hearings almost 20
years earlier.
One by one, the experts refuted their original
testimony, claiming they "didn't know back then"
and admitted that many of JI Rodale's original
claims had since become established medical
facts.

46. In 1971, while describing his legal problems
with the federal government on the set of a
popular TV show, J. I. Rodale suddenly died.
Until he actually stopped breathing and
turned blue, everyone watching the taping
of The Dick Cavett Show thought Rodale
was faking a heart attack in order to make a
point about his troubles with the FTC.

47. Just days before his death, J.I Rodale spoke before an
audience in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The contrarian
leader of the organic movement boasted to his followers,
“My friends, my time has come. Years ago they heaped
violence and poured ridicule on my head. I was called a
cultist and acrackpot…but now I am suddenly becoming
a prophet here on earth, a prophet with profits.”
Rodale’s talents as entrepreneur and passionate
spokesman lifted him from a childhood of immigrant
poverty to the head of the multi-billion dollar publishing
company with major influence on public opinion
worldwide.

48. Today Prevention
magazine has 12 million
readers, and Rodale
Press is the largest
health-oriented publisher
in the world, publishing
~100 new wellness titles
each year that sell a
combined 20 million
copies.

49. JI Rodale’s publications gave voice to the ideas of many other
advocates for alternative health and farming practices

50. In the early 1920s, Rudolf Steiner, an
Austrian philosopher, gave a series of
lectures on the Spiritual Foundations for the
Renewal of Agriculture which inspired the
development of Biodynamic agriculture.
Biodynamic agriculture has much in
common with other organic systems, such as
emphasizing the production and use of
Rudolph Steiner compost and excluding the use of synthetic
(1861-1925) inputs.
Methods unique to Biodynamics include the
use of fermented herbal and mineral
preparations as compost additives and field
sprays and the use of an astrological
planting calendar.

51. Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (1899–1961) was
born in Germany and worked closely with
Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s. In 1928, he
became the director of a biodynamic
research farm in Holland and visited the
U.S. several times during the 1930s giving
lectures on biodynamic agriculture.
In 1940, he immigrated to the U.S. and
provided leadership for several
biodynamic farms where he pioneered
the testing and documentation of
biodynamic practices. He helped establish
the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening
Association in Kimberton, PA where he
developed a friendship with JI Rodale.

54. Lady Eve Balfour (1899-1990) is best
known as the founder of The Soil
Association, Britain's leading organic
food and farming organization. The
Soil Association was born in 1946,
following publication of Lady Eve
Balfour's bestselling book about
organic agriculture, The Living Soil
(Faber & Faber 1943).
In 1939, she launched the Haughley
Experiment on her farm in Suffolk,
. England. It was the first scientific,
side-by-side comparison of organic
and conventional farming and was
maintained for 33 years.

55. The Haughley Experiment
Three side-by-side units of land were established,
each large enough to operate a full farm rotation,
so that the food-chains involved — soil–plant–
animal and back to the soil — could be studied as
they functioned through successive rotational
cycles, involving many generations of plants and
animals, in order that interdependences between
soil, plant and animal, and also any cumulative
effects could develop.

56. One unit was a stockless arable farm — the other two
were both ley farms (temporary pasture alternating
with arable crops) following the same rotation. Each
carried a herd of dairy cows, a flock of poultry and a
small flock of sheep.
All livestock was fed exclusively on the produce of its
own unit, replacements were home bred and cereal
and pulse crops raised from home-grown seed. All
wastes of crops and stock were returned only to its
own unit. Only livestock products and surplus animals
were sold off the farm. All crops were fed to the
animals.

57. On one of the ley units called the Mixed
Section supplementary chemical fertilizers
were used, as well as herbicides, insecticides
and fungicides when thought necessary.
On the other ley unit, called the Organic
Section, no chemicals were used. It was thus
entirely dependent on its own biological
fertility. As nearly as possible a closed cycle was
maintained so that a minimum of unknown
factors would be introduced into the food
chain.

58. Ecology of Earthworms under the ‘Haughley Experiment’
Organic and Conventional Management Regimes - R. J. Blakemore
Significant differences in earthworm populations and soil properties
were found in three sections of a farm at Haughley in Suffolk that, since
1939, had either an organic, a mixed conventional, or a stockless
intensive arable regime. Compared with the mean earthworm
population When the Haughley experiment was terminated, m2, the
of a 1,000 year old permanent pasture of 424 per
organic field had 179 per m2,not as clearfield 98 been hopedthe stockless
the results were the mixed as had per m2 and
field 100 per m2(hardly surprising as we still have a poor
.
understanding of the relationships between soil,
Choice chambers offering the three however the experiment
crop and animal health), field soils, with and without organic
amendments, showed an earthworm preference forhow organic soil (total
clearly contributed to understanding of the the
96 worms) compared to the mixed and stockless soils (75 and 73 worms).
best of old and new traditions in land husbandry
could be combined and paved the way for the first
Soil analyses showed the organic soil had higher moisture, organic C, and
organic standards.
mineral N, P, K, and S compared with soil from the stockless field. The
organic soil also had lower bulk density and good crumb structure
whereas the stockless soil was cloddy and subject to puddling. The
properties of the mixed field soil were intermediate to the others.

60. Sir Robert McCarrison (1878 – 1960) was a
pioneering physician and nutrionist who is
credited with being the first scientist to
experimentally demonstrate the effect of dietary
deficiencies upon animal tissues and organs. He
also carried out human experiments aimed at
identifying the cause of goitre, and included
himself as one of the experimental subjects.
At age 23, he went to India, where he spent 30
years investigating relationships between nutrition and contrasting
disease patterns on the Indian subcontinent.
He concluded that many common diseases increasingly prevalent in
industrial societies were caused by diets made defective by
extensive food processing, and the use of chemical additives. He
deplored the universal consumption in Britain and America of
refined white flour and the substitution of canned, preserved and
artificially sweetened products for fresh natural food.

61. McCarrison's work was widely published
in medical journals. He was honored for
his discoveries, but his recommendations
were largely ignored by government and
the medical profession at a time when
medical thought was focused on the
treatment of disease rather than the
prevention of disease and the promotion
of health.

62. McCarrison studied the inhabitants of the
Hunza valley of Northern India and wrote:

63. JI Rodale brought McCarrison’s research on
the Hunzas to a popular audience

64. Weston A. Price, DDS (1870–1948) was a
dentist and nutritionist. He was the
chairman of the Research Section of the
American Dental Association from 1914–
1923, but was later marginalized by the
American Dental Association for his
outspoken views.
In 1939, Price published Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,
a book that details a series of ethnographic nutritional studies
performed by Price across diverse cultures.

65. In his studies, Price found that many of the ailments of
modern civilization (headaches, dental cavities,
impacted molars, tooth crowding, allergies, heart
disease, asthma, and degenerative diseases such as
tuberculosis and cancer) were not present in cultures
sustained by indigenous diets.
Sadly, within a single generation these same
cultures experienced all the above listed ailments
when they adopted Western foods in their diet:
refined sugars, refined flours, canned goods, etc.

67. Louis Bromfield (1896 – 1956) was an American author and conservationist
who gained international recognition for his writing (30 best-sellers, several
movies and a Pulitzer Prize) and for promoting innovative ecologically
oriented farming practices.
In 1939, after living in France for over 10
years, Louis Bromfield returned to the US
and purchased Malabar Farm, near
Mansfield, OH.
Bromfield dedicated the rest of his life to
agriculture and sought to create a farm
that promoted soil conservation but also
continued to write books and articles. His
later books, including Pleasant Valley,
focused on soil conservation and other
farming issues. He continued to socialize
with prominent artists, including Lauren
Bacall and Humphrey Bogart who were
Louis Bromfield working on married at Malabar Farm in 1945.
another book

69. William Albrecht was a leading soil
scientist who served as the head of
the Agronomy Dept at the U of
Missouri and as the president of the
Soil Science Society of America.
In his latter years, he wrote
extensively about the relationship
between soil fertility and animal and
human health. He felt that animal
health (and ultimately human health)
Dr. William Albrecht was related to soil fertility and that
1886-1974 proper management of soils would
solve most crop, livestock and human
disease problems.

71. From the Acres website
”Acres U.S.A.was founded on the belief that the
world did not begin in 1948, when the research and
development bonanza of World War II combined with
a flood of special interest money to create a new kind
of agriculture, based on petrochemical inputs. Nor
did the world of scientific farming, attuned to nature,
stop dead in its tracks. In fact, much of the best work
in sustainable technology was just beginning.
Readers of Acres U.S.A.reap the harvest of
courageous innovators who sidestepped the Ag
Establishment for decades.”

72. In the early 1940s, Dr. Fukuoka
quit his job as a soil
microbiologist, returned to his
family's farm in southern Japan,
and devoted the next 60 years to
developing natural no-till
methods of growing citrus, rice
and other crops. Americans
became familiar with Fukuoka
through articles in Rodale
publications and his book
The One-Straw Revolution.

73. Prior to the 1970s, mainstream agricultural scientists mostly
ignored organic farming and gardening but agricultural
colleges and experiment stations were increasingly besieged
with letters of inquiry from the public and it became
impossible to ignore the organic movement.
One of the first attempts to respond to the organic advocates
was undertaken by Dr. Firman E. Bear, a prominent soil
chemist from Rutgers University, who in a 1947 article titled
Facts...and Fancies About Fertilizer referred to Sir Albert
Howard, E.B. Balfour, J.I. Rodale, and E.H. Faulkner as
"gloomy prophets".
Other articles critical of the organic movement were
published during this period of polarization such as
The Great Organic Gardening Myth.

74. Shortly after J.I. Rodale died , his son Robert
(Bob) Rodale purchased a 333-acre farm near
Kutztown, PA (that later became the Rodale
Institute). He began hiring scientists with
strong credentials and launched an era of
organic research.

76. Initiated in 1981, The Rodale Institute’s Farming
Systems Trial® (FST) is the longest-running side-by-side
comparison of organic and conventional farming
systems in the US, and one of the oldest in the world.
What began as a 5-year controlled study of what a
typical American grain farmer would go through to give
up chemical fertilizers and pesticides has matured into a
complex, interdisciplinary, collaborative project that will
be continued indefinitely.
The FST compares three cropping systems: a
conventional BMP system, a livestock-based organic
system, and a legume-based organic system.

77. Key FST research results after 25 years
1) higher soil carbon and nitrogen levels in the organic systems
2) comparable crop yields for organic and conventional systems
in years of average precipitation, and greater for organic
systems in drought years
3) fossil energy inputs for organic systems were over 30% lower
4) labor inputs in organic systems averaged ~15% higher
5) net economic return for organic systems was equal or higher

78. Under the direction of Secretary of Agriculture
Robert Bergland (1977-81) the USDA began its
first survey of the organic farming sector.
In 1980, the USDA published the Report and
Recommendations on Organic Farming for the
express purpose of "increasing communication
between organic farmers and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture”.

79. In 1981, the American
Society of Agronomy held
a Symposium on Organic
Farming to examine the
question "Can organic
farming contribute to a
more sustainable
agriculture...?"
They concluded: "The
most probable answer is
that it most definitely
can...”

80. Powerful testimony by Bob
Rodale as well as many
organic farmers and
scientists convinced the U.S.
Congress to include funds
for organic agriculture in
the 1985 Farm Bill. This was
the beginning of an ongoing
process of scientific
validation and refinement
of organic agriculture by
research and education
programs.

81. Bob Rodale was
concerned about the
negative baggage that
the term ORGANIC had
accumulated and
preferred the term
Regenerative
agriculture.

82. Most farmers are using methods that do not
allow production flexibility. American agriculture
of the conventional type "works" only when the
throttle governing energy and input flows is
pulled all the way out. Farmers lack the option of
switching-either permanently or temporarily-to
an alternate system that performs well when
conventional production is not profitable.
Paraphrased Bob Rodale quote that caught my attention back in the 80s

83. Bob Rodale launched a magazine titled NEW FARM in 1979 that
showcased innovative farming practices that were ecologically
oriented but not necessarily organic.
Robert Rodale was killed in a
traffic accident in Moscow in
1990 while launching a
Russian language version of
NEW FARM magazine.

85. The period from 1979 to 1990 was an era of
growing recognition of organic food and
farming at a national level in the United States.
With growing consumer interest, came
commercial interest in establishing standards
for organically produced foods.
As a sign of the new times, in 1979, California
passed the first legal standard for organic
production in the United States.

86. This new attention and recognition led to a backlash in
1981 from the incoming Reagan administration which
tried unsuccessfully to end distribution of the USDA
Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming.
The Reagan administration abolished the recently
established position of Organic Resources Coordinator,
held by Garth Youngberg, who had been a member of
the USDA Study Team for Organic Farming.
Former Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, commented
that millions would starve if all farmers adopted
organic methods.

88. The Federal Organic Foods Production Act of
1990 set out to:
1)Establish national standards governing the
marketing of organically produced products
2)Assure consumers that organically produced
products meet a consistent standard;
3)Facilitate interstate commerce in both fresh
and processed organic foods.
.

89. Full development of USDA Organic standards
took more than a decade. Initially, the
proposed standards did not prohibit the use
of sewage sludge, food irradiation and
genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
These allowances resulted in enormous
public outcry which eventually led to their
removal from the final rules.
The USDA Certified Organic label was
introduced on October 21, 2002.

96. Organic certification requirements
Detailed farm plan showing all fields/buffers
Documentation of all inputs
Documentation that equipment not solely
used for organic has been cleaned properly
On-farm inspection
3 year transition

98. During the past 20 years, the
market demand for organically
produced food in the US has
increased by about 20 percent
annually.
Organic product sales in the US
currently exceed $20 billion.

100. CA = California

102. ~ 0.1% of IL farmland

104. ~ $500 million of organic
foods purchased in IL
each year
< 5% from IL farms :-<