Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
be anathema to today's environmentally minded, socially concerned, politically left-of-centre,
organic supporters. Many organic pioneers were significantly to the right of the political
spectrum and strongly Christian, to the point of fundamentalism and evangelicalism. The
politics, philosophy and religious motivations of these organic forerunners in the UK have
been well documented by Conford (2001). The reason why the ideas of some organic pioneers
are now foreign to the modern organic movement is that it underwent significant change and
upheaval in the 1960s. The publication of
Silent Spring
by Rachel Carson (1962) was a key
turning point for, and the start of, both the modern organic and environmental movements.
This change could well be considered a revolution and, at the least, a significant evolution of
the organic movement. Indeed, many of the concerns and concepts of environmentalism and
modern organic agriculture would be quite alien to many of the organic pioneers, just as the
politics and religion of some pioneers are alien to most involved with the modern organic
movement. A case could be argued that environmentalism saved the organic movement from
obscurity as it had lost the post World War Two argument over the direction of agriculture and
was in significant decline through the 1950s. So while there is a continuum of thought and
membership from the earliest days to the present, the modern organic movement is radically
different from its original forms. It now has environmental sustainability at its core in addition
to the founders concerns for healthy soil, healthy food and healthy people.
Silent Spring
opened the world's eyes to the damage that pesticides and other toxins were
doing to the global environment. As such,
Silent Spring
brought a whole new raft of arguments
against industrial farming in addition to those that the organic movement had been pushing
for many decades.
The 1960s, in which
Silent Spring
was published, were also a time of significant social
change and upheaval. New modes of political and philosophical thought were emerging and
being hotly debated. Many of these were also highly inf luential within the changing organic
movement. Examples of these ideas include
Limits to Growth
(Meadows
et al.
1972) that con-
sidered the issue of the growth of the human population and the global economy and asked
questions such as: what will happen if growth in the world's population continues unchecked?
What will be the environmental consequences if economic growth continues at its current
pace? What can be done to ensure a human economy that provides sufficiently for all and that
fits within the physical limits of the Earth? Another was E.F. Schumacher's
Small is Beautiful:
A Study of Economics as if People Mattered
(1974) with its many radical ideas, including the
concept of sacrificing economic growth for a more fulfilling working life and making quality
of life the central goal of economics. Schumacher was also a president of The Soil Association.
In the 1970s, organic agriculture re-emerged as an ecoagriculture and the strengthening of
existing organic organisations and the founding of new ones occurred, many of which were
focused on the process of certification of farmers and growers. Although there was growing
interest in organic agriculture, it was still clearly outside of mainstream agriculture and
national politics, and while members of the movement worked tirelessly, they gained little
traction with authorities. The levels of self organisation, however, were increasing rapidly, from
individual groups working alone to increasingly coordinated action.
The formation of a formal global network is one of the landmarks by which social and
political movements can say they have come of age. For the organic movement this was the
founding of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in
1972, which to this day, remains the only global organic non-governmental organisation
(NGO). Its creation and continuation was no easy task. Like many other organic organisations
in its earlier years, it depended heavily on vast amounts of goodwill, the hard work of mostly
unpaid people and its financial security was often in the balance. It has grown from a body
that national governments ignored or argued against, to one that now commands the respect
