From the Ground Up? The Principles of Australian Organic Agriculture - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 224

NASAA's constitution illustrates the integration and endurance of these three
principles into the definition of organic:
Organic agriculture means a system of agriculture able to balance productivity with
low vulnerability to problems such as pest infestation and environmental degradation
while maintaining the quality of land for future generations. In practice this involves a
system which avoids or largely excludes the use of synthetically compounded fertilizers,
pesticides, growth regulators, livestock feed additives and other harmful or potentially
harmful substances. It includes the use of technologies such as crop rotations, mechanical
cultivation and biological pest control; and such material as legumes, crop residues, animal
manures, green manures, other organic wastes and mineral bearing rocks. The intention is
to encourage natural biological systems (National Association for Sustainable Agriculture
Australia 2004 ).

Therefore, would an organic grower from the founding of the Victorian organic
societies in the mid twentieth century recognize Australian organic farming and
gardening today? Yes. They may be bemused by genetic modification, certification,
industrialization and export but would note that organic agriculture continues to rest
on the same belief that human health and wellbeing depend on the wellbeing of
the biophysical environment, an idea which remains as relevant in the twenty-first
century s as it did at the founding of Australia's first organic societies in the 1940s.

References

Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society. 1947. Organic farming digest. Organic
Farming Digest 1(7): 20.
Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society. 1950. Farm and garden digest. Farm and
Garden Digest 2(4): 3.
Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society. 1951. Farm and garden digest. Farm and
Garden Digest 2(10): 3.
Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society. 1952. Farm and garden digest. Farm and
Garden Digest 3(1): 39.
Barr, N., and J. Cary. 1992. Greening a brown land: The Australian search for sustainable land
use . Melbourne: Macmillan.
Bio - Dynamic Research Institute. 2005. Demeter bio - Dynamic agriculture in Australia .
Powelltown: Bio - Dynamic Research Institute.
Biological Farmers of Australia. 2006. Organics, one of our most viable solutions to climate
change. The Organic Advantage 2-3.
Buck, D., C. Getz, and J. Guthman. 1997. From farm to table: The organic vegetable commodity
chain of Northern California. Sociologia Ruralis 37(1): 3-20.
Campbell, H., and R. Liepins. 2001. Naming organics: Understanding organic standards in New
Zealand as a discursive field. Sociologia Ruralis 41(1): 22-39.
Carson, R. 1963. Silent Spring . London: Hamish Hamilton: 6.
Chappel, D. 2006. [Interview].
Charman,

P.E., and B.W. Murphy (eds.). 2000. Soils: Their properties and management .

Oxford/Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Conford, P. 2001. The origins of the organic movement , vol. 15. Edinburgh: Floris Books.
Coombes, B., and H. Campbell. 1998. Dependent reproduction of alternative modes of agriculture:
Organic farming in New Zealand. Sociologia Ruralis 38: 127-145.