Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
tive solution. Albert Howard was a botanist, agricultural scientist, farmer, writer and
agricultural advisor to the British government in India in the interwar years. With
his botanist wife, Gabrielle, Howard was developing ways to maintain soil fertility
and increase plant and animal disease resistance through large-scale production
of compost. Howard, in his books An Agricultural Testament and Farming and
Gardening for Health and Disease argued that humus was vital for plant growth
and encouraging disease resistance. Human health, he claimed, whether plant,
animal or human, was dependent on nutritious food grown in humus rich fertile
soil (Howard 1943 , 1945 ). Howard's ideas were part of a widespread renewed
interest in the connection between human health and environmental influences
(McMichael 2001b ). The inherent challenges of Australian soils and the crisis of
erosion and declining soil fertility; specific solutions offered by Albert Howard
and resurgence of popular interest in the importance of nutrition to human health
provided the catalysts for the founding of Australia's first organic farming and
gardening societies in the 1940s.
The importance of creating humus rich, fertile soil was described by early
Australian organic gardeners as the 'Rule of Return' whereby anything organic or
biodegradable must be returned to soil to decay and thereby replenish the organic
matter within the soil. It was promoted as one of the fundamentals of life and organic
growers described the neglect of this Rule had resulted in erosion and loss of fertility
in Australian soils (Living Soil Association of Tasmania 1946 ; Australian Organic
Farming and Gardening Society 1951 ). Practicing the Rule of Return was the key to
quality food production:
The most amazing results that have been obtained, by obeying this law of return [
]
are found in the improvement of human health. Where the food has been supplied from
grains, vegetables, and fruit, milk, eggs and meat produced in obedience to this cycle, the
general health, energy and power of resisting disease has been built up to an amazing extent
(Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society 1947 ).
:::
Versions of the Rule of Return had been part of traditional agricultural practices
worldwide (McNeill and Winiwarter 2004 ), but for early Australian organic farmers
of the 1940s the most important methods, promoted in the magazines of the
three societies were composting, use of manure and green cover crops (or 'green
manure'). Composted human manure or sewage, particularly municipal sewage,
was heavily promoted by the organic societies in the 1950s. They believed that
the composting of human manure was an essential practice in the Rule of Return,
returning nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Entire issues of the societies'
magazines were devoted to the issue and they held public demonstrations of large-
scale composting of municipal sewage (Victorian Compost Society 1954 ).
11.2.2
Chemical Free
By the late 1940s, 'chemical free' had joined humus rich, fertile soil as another
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