THURSDAY, JAN 26, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 3-10
Organic farming
While it has been often celebrated for how it helped to feed a rising population of human beings, the so called Green Revolution of large scale industrial agriculture with its addiction to fossil resources and its systematic degradation of local farming communities and biocultural diversity in favour of predatory multinational corporations, has turned out to be a failure with disastrous effects. Alternatives do exist. The Soil Association in the UK was started in 1946 and the Rodale Institute in the USA in 1947; both institutions promote and develop organic farming approaches. The Soil Association is an environmental charity promoting sustainable, organic farming and championing human health.
The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) is the worldwide umbrella organisation for the organic movement. From their website, “Our mission is ‘leading change, organically’. This means that we work toward true sustainability in agriculture, from the field, through the value chain to the consumer. With more than 750 members in over 127 countries, we are the voice of the global organic movement”. (Source: IFOAM).
See also the IFOAM Principles of Organic Agriculture, which turn out to be remarkably similar to the Permaculture ethics, as well as, the Best Practice Guidelines for Agriculture and Value Chain, as depicted in Figure 3.3.
In different European languages organic agriculture is often also called biological or ecological agriculture (as opposed to the industrial high chemical and fossil fuel input variety). Over the last fifty years, organic agriculture has developed into a well-codified set of principles and practices. IFOAM expresses the aims of organic farming as follows:
- To produce food of high nutritional quality in sufficient quantity;
- To work with natural systems rather than seeking to dominate them;
- To encourage and enhance biological cycles within the farming system, involving micro-organisms, soil flora and fauna, plants and animals;
- To maintain and increase the long-term fertility of soils;
- To use, as far as possible, renewable resources in locally organised agricultural systems;
- To work as much as possible within a closed system with regard to organic matter and nutrient elements;
- To give all livestock conditions of life that allow them to perform all aspects of their innate behaviour;
- To avoid all forms of pollution that may result from agricultural techniques;
- To maintain the genetic diversity of the agricultural system and its surroundings, including the protection of plant and wildlife habitats;
- To allow agricultural producers an adequate return and satisfaction from their work, including a safe working environment;
- To consider the wider social and ecological impact of the farming system.
[To repeat: Critically assessing all claims by above would be exhasuting and as any points I might make if I did so would be dismissed (e.g. Alternative Farming), I would suggest anyone who might rather know than believe start with the Odum brothers as viewed by an historian of science. "'Potatoes Made of Oil': Eugene and Howard Odum and the Origins and Limits of American Agroecology." Telling stories that selectively cite 'science' as authority is not science.]
Module 3, lesson 11
