From the Ground Up? The Principles of Australian Organic Agriculture - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 208

interviews with organic farmers conducted by the author. This chapter is part of
a larger study that examined organic farming and gardening through the lens of
environmental history exploring the history of beliefs and practices in Australian
organic agriculture from the early twentieth century to the present day (Jones 2010 ).
This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section explores the beginning
of organic agriculture in Australia and identifies three fundamental principles
upon which Australian organic growing was founded. The second section explores
Australian organic agriculture in the 2000s. It will firstly discuss the structure and
context of Australian organic agricultural certification and industrialization today
then return to the founding principles of organic growing and examine whether these
remain the key principles of Australian organic agriculture today.

11.2 Organic Agriculture in the 1940s and 1950s - The

Beginnings of Organic Farming in Australia

Australia's first organic farming and gardening societies were founded in the 1940s:
the Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society (AOFGS) in 1944; the
Victorian Compost Society in 1945 and the Living Soil Association of Tasmania in
1946. These groups were among the earliest organizations in the world devoted to
the production of food using organic methods. International organizations founded
at a similar time as the Australian societies and with similar aims (and to which the
three Australian societies were affiliated) were the Humic Compost Club of New
Zealand founded in the early 1940s and the British Soil Association founded in
1947.
The establishment of these groups has been identified as the beginning of a
distinctive movement of organic growing. Although the growers of these societies
drew upon many traditional agricultural practices (such as use of animal manure and
compost as fertilizer), the establishment of these societies was the beginning of a
conscious affiliation of growers who shared fundamental philosophies and practices
of food production, were self-conscious about these principles and practices and
identified themselves as a group in opposition to other farming practices (Conford
2001 ). All three Australian societies comprised both farmers and gardeners and
drew membership from the middle class social establishment in both urban and
rural areas. The Victorian and Tasmanian societies directed most attention to small
farmers and gardeners while the New South Wales society made graziers their area
of special interest. After only 2 years of operation, the Victorian Compost Society
had over 450 financial members, increasing to 600 by the early 1950s, and for every
financial member there would most likely also have been a 'submerged network' of
unaffiliated supporters (Melucci 1989 ).
Each society produced its own publications: Farm and Garden Digest and
Organic Farming Digest were published by the Australian organic farming society;
Victorian Compost News by the Victorian Compost Society and a self-titled