The Soil and Health

A second movement, organic agriculture, also has roots in the 1940s.  Instead of finding its beginning in repurposing army munitions, however, the American organic farming movement grew from a more peaceful source, the publication of a book.  Sir Albert Howard’s work, An Agricultural Testament, first appeared in England in 1940.  The book arrived during the London Blitz, an improbable addition to war-torn bookstores and libraries. A second book, The Soil and Health, appeared in 1945.

Sir Howard’s tomes teach a benign approach to food production modeled on ancient farming systems.  An agricultural researcher and advisor, Sir Howard sought to popularize theories he found, then further developed, in India.  Impressed with peasant farmers’ ability to maintain soil fruitfulness by intelligent crop rotation, he sought to build even greater fertility by recycling plant nutrients back to the soil.  In other words, he advocated various forms of composted.  Sir Howard was convinced that chemical fertilizers and artificial pesticides were the wrong approach to increasing crop yields.  

The main theme of both An Agricultural Testament and The Soil and Health is complexity.  The author stresses the necessity of maintaining the intricate web of relationships among plants, animals, and humans.  Sir Howard’s ideas might have been lost in the cacophony of World War II except for an American who amplified the message and delivered it unceasingly to the American public.  That man was J.I. Rodale, his broadcast platform a small magazine called Organic Gardening and Farming.