OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF ORGANIC FARMING OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi The Global History of Organic Farming GREGORY A. BARTON 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6D P, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Gregory A. Barton 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017954533 ISBN 978–0–19–964253–3 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi In memory of my Grandfather, James Gentry Russel, Oregon farmer and gentleman OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi Acknowledgments This book owes a great deal to many individuals and institutions, without whose support the story of organic farming as told in this book would be impossible. I worked on this project while employed as a permanent Research Fellow at The Australian National University, and as Professor of History at my current employers, Western Sydney University and the University of Johannesburg. The Australian Research Council generously provided a grant that took me to archives around the globe. Dr. Frederik Kruger, one of the leading lights in the history of ecological research from the 1980s to the present, generously read this draft and offered innumerable constructive comments. Dr. Adam Lucas, historian of science at the University of Wollongong, helpfully read the early chapters. Michael Bennett kindly read numerous chapters. An initial paper on the topic benefited from a sem- inar run by Dr. Brett Bennett and Anthony Hopkins in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. Dr. Tatshushi Fujihara, from Kyoto University, kindly scanned and forwarded vital documents on the history of organic farming in Japan, including sections of his own work. Toshi Asakura-Ward translated these documents from Japanese into English and without his work, funded by Western Sydney University, the story of the organic farming movement in Japan would not have been made available to the English-speaking world. My mentor, Harold Perkin, now deceased, continued to inspire with his example of understanding global history through the analysis of social history. The Journal of Agricultural History, Itinerario and Palgrave Macmillan have generously allowed me to reprint sections of two articles and a book chapter, respectively. I have benefited from discussions with the historian John Paull and from the organic farmer Steve Solomon in Tasmania who runs an extensive online archive, the Soil and Health Library. My greatest debt is owed, however, to the Matthaei family, who carefully preserved the archives of Albert Howard, and his first and second wives, Gabrielle and Louise. Long thought lost, these newly found papers form a core middle section of this work. The family has kindly allowed me free reign to use this material where the evidence has led, and never intimated any restrictions on my conclusions. I am grateful to them for their generosity. St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, has also kindly accepted the offer of the archival collection from the Matthaei family so that future generations will be able to access the papers. And, finally, I must mention my mother, Ina Mae Barton (née Russell), who used her considerable genealogical skills to hunt down and find the extended relatives of Louise Howard that led to this discovery. She also transcribed the considerable correspondence of Gabrielle Howard. The limitations of this work—which on a topic so vast, will prove to be many—are my responsibility alone. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi Table of Contents 1. Roots of the Organic Challenge 1 2. The Cultural Soil of Organic Farming 20 3. Albert Howard and the World as Shropshire 49 4. The Howards in India 62 5. The Search for Pre-Modern Wisdom 80 6. The Compost Wars 94 7. To the Empire and Beyond 118 8. The Globalization of Organic Farming 156 9. The 1980s to the Present 184 10. Organic Farming and the Challenge of Globalization 197 Bibliography 205 Index 223 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi 1 Roots of the Organic Challenge Almost a hundred years ago the predecessors of the organic farming movement threw down the gauntlet and challenged modern agriculture and, in particular, the doctrine of progress that informed it, with its emphasis on bigger as better, machines as improvement, and chemicals as fit products for fertilizers, pesticides, and food. Organic farming can be defined as a system of agriculture that relies on ecological processes to minimalize or eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the production of crops. Organic farming is a protocol, a system based on philosophical assumptions about how nature works. It is a thoughtful and a self-conscious practice. It is also a cultural movement and at times engages the Christian tradition of stewardship and the domination of humans over nature. It is allied with sustainable agriculture in the past (because it drew inspiration from the past), but it is a relatively new movement in human history, born out of a reaction to the perceived failures of industrial agriculture. We should not conflate organic farming with sustainable agriculture, which is a term coined in the 1980s to broaden the appeal of organic farming to include other approaches that did not carry the same political opposition. Sustainable agriculture is more of a goal than a process.1 Political opposition to organic farming abounded because in many ways it challenged modernity itself, and the enlightenment doctrine of progress that the future will always improve. Organic farming turned the gaze of millions of people, institutions, and governments backwards to look at the past as a source of guidance and wisdom. It changed how farmers over large swaths of the earth treat soil, and the crops grown on the soil. It changed how birds feed on crops, and the quality of water that drains into our streams, rivers, and oceans. It changed our consumer habits, and in many ways our ethics, demanding that we think about how our food is grown and the effect our daily habits have on nature. This book is a critical appreciation of the history of the organic farming challenge. It covers the beginning of the movement in the early and mid-twentieth century up to nearly contemporary times when the organic farming movement transformed 1 See a discussion of the introduction of the term “sustainable agriculture” by J. Patrick Madden in The Early Years: the LISA, SARE, and ACE Programs. Available online at: https://www.google.com.au/ url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwi7svyg9Z3UAhXDUZQKHRDSB YEQFggsMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sare.org%2Fcontent%2Fdownload%2F50101%2F66 1407%2FThe_Early_Years_(Madden).pdf%3Finlinedownload%3D1&usg=AFQjCNF3zBQStYFZ NsvtjDCB2mOS4lcklw [accessed June 2, 2017]. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 08/01/18, SPi 2 Global History of Organic Farming from a cluster of outsider organizations and achieved mainstream acceptance in the 1980–90s. It focuses particularly on the towering personalities of Albert Howard (the preeminent figure in the founding of organic farming) and his second wife Louise. Following the trail of newly discovered archives this book unveils Louise as a pivotal—and entirely overlooked—champion of the environ- mental movement, a movement that she profoundly impacted in the decades following the Second World War. This book opens new trails for investigation that are only touched upon here: the fascinating story of how small circles of civic minded individuals can launch global change; how movements fermenting in isolation or in abeyance spring suddenly onto the public landscape; and, not least, the unsung role of women in science, reminding us that much of the past is undiscovered, and may still bring forth, in the immortal words of Chaucer: “new corn from old fields.” The organic farming movement changed the world. It is a bewilderingly complex and surprising story, chock full of contradictions that sprouted and thrived from barren soil, fertilized by unlikely impulses and personalities. Organic farming is likely to continue to challenge the smug assumption that science is incorruptible by vested interests and industrialization and that humans have the knowledge to ignore natural processes with impunity.