During recent years, health scares, rampant obesity, and the spread of disease throughout the world have prompted a growing interest in the organic farming industry. While certainly no true competitor to conventional agriculture (total U.S. sales of organic food in 2003 amounted to only a third of the advertising money spent by conventional food firms in the same year), organically grown health food has created a solid niche for itself in the food market (Fromartz 2006). Indeed, with the growth of farmers markets and an increased concern over the effects of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, organic food is beginning to make a serious bid for control of the food industry. However, in its early years, organically grown health food was only a fairly obscure, radical segment of the market.

From Agrarianism to Industrialization

Organic farming and the production of all-natural health food are not new phenomena. For millennia, before the invention of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, farmers produced crops for sustenance and profit using only natural means. To enrich the soil, farmers used a combination of animal manure and crop variation. In America, it was the vision of early president Thomas Jefferson that this pastoral, agrarian type of lifestyle would last forever, with every citizen owning his own small piece of land to work and till (Fromartz 2006). However, as the number of small, agrarian farms declined and large-scale commercial farming became increasingly more ubiquitous in the late nineteenth century, farmers found that it was no longer lucrative to produce food using entirely natural means. Aggressive farming had exhausted the soil throughout the eastern region of the United States, and the westward expansion was rapidly eating up viable chunks of land on the frontier. Consequently, commercial farmers were forced to consider other means of fertilizing the soil for adequate crop production. This need naturally led to the advent of chemical fertilizers. 

Chemical fertilizers were first suggested by the German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1840. Liebig argued that it was only the minerals in animal manure that were fertilizing the soil; thus, chemical substitutes of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous could perform the function just as well (Fromartz, 2006). By the twentieth century, Liebig’s ideas had caught on, enabling farmers to plant the same crops on the same soil year after year, and with less labor. Synthetic fertilizers were so successful at maximizing profits and decreasing costs that it was only a matter of time before farmers turned to chemical treatments for pest control as well. During the early decades of the century, commercial farming and synthetic chemicals had entered into a love affair that has yet to be broken.

Organic Farmers React

It was not long after the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that health-conscious farmers and ecologists began to react to this new method of agriculture. By the 1920s, a strong organic farming movement had begun in Great Britain, and it quickly spread throughout several countries in the world. The organic farming movement was first conceived of by the British agricultural scientist Sir Albert Howard, commonly known as the father of organic farming (Fromartz, 2006). Howard had spent several years in India, studying the agricultural methods of the local population, and was aghast at the heavy use of chemical fertilizers in his native England. While in India, he noticed that the local farmers were able to produce a surplus of food every year by using natural animal compost, and the animals fed with this food were much healthier than those he observed in England. Based upon his observations in both India and Britain, Howard postulated that healthy soil, nurtured with natural compost, would bring about healthier, more vigorous plants, stronger animals, and more nutritious food for everyone involved. His theory would later become the basis of the organic farming and health food method.

Howard’s ideas of more naturalistic farming quickly spread throughout Europe in the early 1920s. In Germany, Rudolph Steiner built upon Howard’s theories to create the first comprehensive organic farming method, biodynamic agriculture. Biodynamic agriculture emphasized the cyclical nature of healthy farming, wherein healthy animals relied upon healthy food, healthy food relied upon healthy soil, and healthy soil relied upon healthy animals (for nutritious compost) (Fromartz 2006). According to Steiner, it was the farmer’s role to guide and balance this cyclical process. The movement gradually took off among organic farmers and began to develop its own cosmology. Biodynamic farmers looked toward lunar and planetary calendars to determine the most auspicious time for planting and used a variety of superstitious methods in the preparation of their compost. While many modern biodynamic farmers do not always follow the method’s cosmology religiously, they do continue to use careful observation of ecological systems, along with properly prepared compost, to promote healthy plants and animals.

In the years prior to World War II, organic farming also found proponents in the United States. In 1907, Franklin H. King, a retired government worker in the Department of Agriculture, traveled throughout China to observe the agricultural methods of the local population (Fromartz, 2006). Disgusted by the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in America, King found that Chinese peasants had been able to maintain fertile soil for thousands of years by using natural manure compost and rotating crops regularly. By 1938, even the U.S. government had been forced to take some notice of the problematic nature of conventional farming methods when topsoil began to blow off farms throughout the Great Plains region, leaving thousands of farmers destitute without the ability to plant their crops. In the early 1940s, J. I. Rodale, a Pennsylvanian farmer and magazine publisher, had also begun to notice the depleted nutrition of American agriculture. Building upon Howard’s work, Rodale began experimenting with organic farming methods on his own farm. He then outlined his methods and began publishing them in his magazine Organic Gardening, which served to spark an organic farming movement throughout the United States during the 1940s and 1950s (Fromartz 2006).

Post-World War II Organic Farming

At the end of World War II, wartime technological advances in chemicals brought about even more widespread use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. Ammonium nitrate, a chemical used to create munitions during the war, became an inexpensive source of nitrogen for fertilizers, while the newly developed pesticide DDT was widely used throughout American farms (Dunn-Georgiou 2002). This rise in chemical treatments greatly worried organic farmers in the post-war era. Rodale continued to spread the word about the benefits of organic farming and health food in his magazine, and his theories began to catch on with the baby boomer generation in the 1960s. The publication of Rachel Carson’s influential book Silent Spring in 1962 also served to spark more interest in organic food production, as the harmful results of DDT became ever more evident (Dunn-Georgiou 2002). By the late 1960s, the counterculture in the United States had embraced organic farming, and small, cooperative farms had sprung up all across the country.

As the organic farming movement entered the 1970s, greater overall concern about the environment generated even more interest in healthy farming methods. The differences between organically grown and conventionally grown food had become clearer, and proponents of organic health food focused their attention on purchasing only locally grown crops. This movement engendered a huge increase in local farmers markets during the 1970s. Worldwide interest in organic farming also led to the creation of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in 1972, which served to increase the distribution and exchange of information about organic farming methods throughout the world (Fromartz 2006). More and more interest in organic farming and the food produced from it in the 1980s also led to the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. This act, the first law to create any sort of government regulation for organic agriculture, defines which food items may be labeled “organic,” based upon the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Today, the retail market for organically produced food is growing at a rate of 20% annually (Fromartz 2006). Increased concern about the link between chemical food treatments and a number of health problems has been largely responsible for this rapid growth. While organic food producers are certainly ecstatic about the growth of the industry, increased consumer demand for organic food creates somewhat of a dissonance between the small-scale farming ideals of the original organic farmers and the large-scale production needs of modern organic farmers. As consumers continue to demand the more healthful food products of organic agriculture, only time will tell how the organic farming movement will respond. In the end, organic farming will likely succeed only if it stays true to its founders’ original ideals of healthy soil, healthy animals, and healthy food.

Dunn-Georgiou, Elisha. 2002. Everything You Need to Know About Organic Foods. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.