UEMA 2021

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What Is Organic Anyway?

When you think of organic food, what words come to mind? Natural, local, ethical? In fact, the classification of organic food is a tricky business.

    Until the 19th century, nobody would have considered farming as anything other than organic. Crops were fertilized using animal manure and compost. In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, chemists were discovering more about chemicals. The work of German chemist Justus von Liebig, in particular, led to the development of cheap nitrogen fertilizers. The agricultural revolution that followed, especially in Great Britain, brought about a huge increase in crop production. This helped feed the country’s rapidly growing urban population and reduce famine. However, not everybody was convinced of the benefits of the new technologies.

    Sir Albert Howard’s experiences in India convinced him that correct animal and crop management in a local area produced strong pest-resistant plants that were superior to those grown with chemical fertilizers. He saw chemical fertilizers as expensive, unnecessary, and unsustainable and studied ways to farm productively but naturally.

    Howard himself never used the word organic. It was British agriculturalist Lord Northbourne who first referred to a farm as a single “organic whole,” describing a more balanced, sustainable style of farming. Northbourne’s ideas, however, were not widely accepted. The following years saw an increase in the use of fertilizers and pesticides, which allowed farmers to plant large quantities of single crops. Most farms became industrialized single-crop producers that depended on pesticides and fertilizers. Then in the 1970s, some people began to express their concerns about the negative effects of these methods on soil quality and the environment. These green activists began to call for a return to more traditional styles of farming.

    At the same time, in other parts of the world modern methods were replacing traditional farming. In Mexico, Pakistan, and India, Nobel Prize-winning agriculturalist Norman Borlaug pioneered the use of new crops and technologies and greatly increased food production. Environmentalists criticized Borlaug’s work, which they claimed led to reliance on a single crop, inequality, malnutrition, and the loss of natural wildlife. While Borlaug recognized some of these claims, he argued that his principle aim was an end to hunger, something, he pointed out, that most of his critics had never experienced.

    Meanwhile in the USA and the UK, many smaller farms were trying to return to natural methods, growing many different crops and keeping animals to fertilize the soil. Throughout the 1970s, activists continued to promote a return to more traditional ways of living, and some people were encouraged to try to provide their own food, both out in the countryside and using smaller urban gardens.

    However, as the idea of organic food became more popular, big business began to move in. The 1980s and 1990s saw the growth of large organic farms and supermarkets, and the importation of organic produce from abroad. At the same time, new legislation in places such as the USA and Europe has made it extremely expensive and complicated for small producers to obtain organic certification. Ironically, many natural local farms are not classed as organic, while much of the organic food supermarkets sell often comes from foreign countries. This has led to criticism from environmentalists who feel that the term organic no longer represents the ideals of organic farming.

    As we move into the 21st century with a world population of seven billion people, the debate on how we should feed ourselves shows no sign of coming to an end.

SHACKLETON, Caroline & TURNER, Nathan Paul. Money Tree: the business of organics. Cambridge University Press, 2014.