Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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farmers. Thus, U.S. government agricultural payments, while clearly being
the backbone of support of industrial agriculture (half of farm income is
from federal government support) are mostly irrelevant to organic farmers.
At the same time, organic farmers are missing out on research dollars as
well, since organic farming research has been relegated to the backseat and
receives little financial support.
Organic farming has been playing catch-up to the conventional indus-
trial research system since its modern inception in the 1970s. Industrial
agriculture is strongly supported by the USDA and land grant university
structures. The 1862 Morrill Act established the land grant colleges to “teach
such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanical
arts”and to promote“practical education of the industrial classes”(National
Research Council 1996). This, with several later pieces of legislation, set up
the three components of the land grant system: teaching, research, and ex-
tension (this provides public service to society through technology transfer
and extended education). The basic tenant was that practical information
was to be studied and brought to the average citizen. Unfortunately, most of
the agricultural research that has been conducted now is of little value for
organic farmers because the topics are irrelevant and much of the research
is related to agrichemical studies. First, “research results from biologically
impoverished conventional farming systems cannot be easily transferred to
organic farming systems, since plant nutritional and resistance conditions
and the biological environment have profound effects on disease manage-
ment” (van Bruggen and Termorshuizen 2003, 154). Organic farms are more
diverse agroecosystems, with healthier, balanced soils, so conventional re-
search simply does not apply. Second, the core of agricultural research is
controlled by agricultural input corporations, such as pesticide manufac-
turers, that provide significant funding for land grant university research
on their particular chemical inputs. Obviously these corporations see no
benefit in funding organic farming research that would lead to a reduction
in the use of their agrichemicals. As noted in the Acres USA
Ecofarm Primer
,
“The answer to pest crop destroyers is sound fertility management in terms
of exchange capacity, pH modification, and scientific farming principles
that USDA, Extension and Land Grant colleges have refused to teach ever
since the great discovery was made that fossil fuel companies have grant
money” (Walters and Fenzau 1996, xiii).
This lack of funding for organic methods influences the topics of univer-
sity research, with organic techniques seldom being the subject of study. In
fact, the general agricultural faculty mind-set has been in strong support of
conventional industrial agriculture (Beus and Dunlap 1992). Some faculty
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