From the Ground Up? The Principles of Australian Organic Agriculture - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 212

Gardening Society of New South Wales enshrined opposition to all chemical
pesticides in its objectives. It stated that: “the Society [ ] condemns the use of

poisonous sprays and dusts as such preparations injure the soil by killing its micro-
organism, also the earthworms, bees and birds that are in the vicinity” (Australian
Organic Farming and Gardening Society 1952 ).
Chemical pesticides, many based on arsenic or tobacco had been available in
Australia at least since the late nineteenth century (Jones and Chesters 2006 ). Soon
after the end of the Second World War arsenic based chemical pesticides were being
replaced by a new generation of complex chemicals: the organochlorides, chemical
compounds of carbon, hydrogen and chlorine. The most notorious member of
this family of chemicals was DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). DDT, whose
release as an agricultural chemical in Australia was roughly contemporaneous
with the establishment of the organic societies was strongly opposed by organic
growers. Most people associate the beginning of the campaign against DDT with
the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, but Australian organic
growers were condemning DDT over 10 years before Silent Spring's publication.
Within 3 years of the chemical's release in Australia, organic societies launched a
concerted and increasingly vocal campaign against DDT as responsible for killing
beneficial insects, and for threatening human health. For example, the New South
Wales society, in a cover article about pesticides in 1950, questioned the effect of
DDT on human health: “If fruit trees need to be drenched with poison sprays before
they can produce a crop, what is the effect of such fruit on the health and wellbeing
of the people who have to consume it?” (Australian Organic Farming and Gardening
Society 1950 ).
The use of chemical pesticides, like chemical fertilizers, was contrary to organic
growers' ecological philosophy. Pesticides provided a short-term remedy to destroy
the pest on an individual plant or animal rather than a systematic method of
prevention of pests, diseases and deficiencies. By contrast, the organic methods
of practicing the Rule of Return attempted to prevent disease by creating healthy
plants, animals and people. Opposition to chemicals pesticides and fertilizers, like
chemical fertilizers, concerned the dependence of human health on natural cycles
of growth, decay and plant and animal resistance to disease rather than on manu-
factured chemical inputs. The key to health, organic growers claimed, was working
with the natural environment to prevent disease rather than administering 'quick
fixes'. While the main organic response to pests and diseases was to grow plants
and raise animals on humus-rich soil, organic growers also promoted other systemic
preventative measures to avoid pest and disease concentration. These solutions were
based on the idea, expounded by ecologist Eugene Odum, among others, that nature
as a whole was self-regulating and in a state of equilibrium or constantly evolving
towards stable equilibrium. Individual organisms contributed to the overall balanced
state of the environment. Organic growers criticized insecticides for upsetting
Nature's balance by indiscriminately killing beneficial as well as harmful insects,
destroying predator insects as well as the pests (Australian Organic Farming and
Gardening Society 1951 ). Organic methods for avoiding accumulation of pests and

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