Backgroud-Organics

BACKGROUND of Organics.

WEBSITE: DIY ORGANIC GARDEN 

The USDA has farms evaluate them selves their Economics/Business, Social Issues like Family and Community, Resources/Environment and Policies and Other factors.

ECONOMICS/BUSINESS issues are things like loans, management costs, landlords if you lease land, equipment costs etc.

SOCIAL ISSUES FAMILY are own or lease land, spouce, kids, labor, in-laws, health.  SOCIAL ISSUES COMMUNITY are school, church, 4H, FA, Farm Bureau Extension offices, Little League

RESOURCES/ENVIRONMENT are SWAPA (Soil, Water,Air, Plants), Pesticide laws, wetland, nutrient management, lake etc.

POLICY/OTHER are granddad laws, electric power lines,  Interstates etc.

All the above plus more is part of the process of signing up for the CAP(138) Conservation Activity Plan for Organic transition.  A FULL evaluation of all issues are incorporated into planning Farming/ranching activity.  This is nothing new, farmers/ranchers have intuitively or through the family histories considered all the above resources when they ran their farming/ranching businesses. 

What may be new to the agriculture business is the business of CONSERVATION.  Although the dust bowl of the 1930’s  was a wake up call for the nation; it was also the birth of Conservation farming and eventually led into Organic methods of agriculture.  From approximately the 1930’s to present many Conversationalists, scientists, agriculturalists and others were developing new philosophies of conserving the Natural resources of the United States.  The advent of farm machinery created bigger and bigger farms but the 1930’s and the dust bowl saw a decline in farming as the Nation was moving into the Industrial age.  “From the Second World War to the conflict in Vietnam, chemical manufacturers produced a surplus of chemical nerve agents, ammonium nitrate (used in explosives), and various defoliants that soon became the pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides of the Green Revolution.” Per Rodale Institute, Transition to Organic gardening.

“J.I. Rodale popularized the term "organic" when he founded Organic Farming and Gardening magazine in 1942. J.I. and early contemporaries—such as Rudolf Steiner, Sir Albert Howard and Lady Eve Balfour—believed that healthy soil was the key to proper nutrition and human health. Now, in the 21st century, modern science is proving that they were right.” Excerpt from Rodale Institute Transition to Organic gardening.

"One of these days the public is going to wake up and will pay for eggs, meat and vegetables according to how they were produced. A sustainable premium will be paid for high quality products, such as those raised by the organic method."

~J.I. Rodale,
Organic Farming and Gardening, May 1942