Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
five geographical regions provide a framework for investigating organic
agriculture. The multiple ecological and social issues that influence organic
farming are played out in a unique way in each place.
This topic presents organic farmers and their experiences within this
regional geography. Successful organic farmers are undoubtedly the experts
on organic farming. Pragmatism suggests that we view a situation through
the eyes of those who know it best. So I let organic farmers speak for them-
selves. Through interviews and lengthy discussions they explain how they
gather information, overcome adversity, find motivation, make manage-
ment decisions, and take action. Their experiences and opinions provide a
rich view of the topics relevant to organic agriculture today. This topic also
contributes a thorough survey of past research on organic farming. This
research overview illustrates what topics are commonly studied and indi-
cates what researchers and society as a whole think about organic farming.
Much of this past research does not provide the rich geography of organic
agriculture that organic farmers themselves reveal.
Overall, this topic has four goals: to convince readers that a wholesale
shift to organic farming would solve many of the problems that exist in U.S.
agriculture; to offer extraordinary examples of innovative organic farmers
who have successfully made this transition; to describe potential problems
within organic agriculture (particularly Big O Ag: the large agribusiness
corporations wanting tomake a fast buck from the popularity of the organic
label); and to outline clear actions that we must take to protect midsized
family organic farms.
[2],
(2)
Lines: 62 to 76
———
0.0pt PgVar
———
Short Page
PgEnds: T
E
X
[2],
(2)
W
HAT IS ORGANIC FARMING?
The term
organic farming
goes back to the 1940s when a British writer, Lord
Northbourne, described an integrated farm as a “dynamic living organic
whole” (Scofield 1986, 1). This idea of wholeness and complexity is still
present within the definition of organic farms today (Høgh-Jensen 1998).
Unfortunately, organic farming is oftendescribed as an opposite; it is defined
by what it does not do (Tamm 2001). So organic farmers do
not
use synthetic
fertilizers and pesticides and do
not
plant genetically engineered seeds. But
what is the proactive definition? What
does
organic farming mean? Accord-
ing to organic agricultural researchers and the farmers interviewed for this
topic, it means crop rotation (changing the crops grown in a field each
season) to build healthy fertile soil that has few pest problems (Watson et
al. 2002). Organic farmers believe that “weeds are an index of the character
