These three organic classics, originally published in 1943, 1945 and 1946, are handsomely reprinted here with helpful, if occasionally eccentric, introductions from Lawrence Howard and the series editor Philip Conford, historian of the organic movement. Most readers of Rural History will be aware of the key themes and idées fixes of the early organicists set out in great detail and no little elegance in these iconic texts. The primary concern of these distinguished pioneers, with their collective experience of medicine, agronomy and practical farming at home and in the Empire, was health; health of the soil, the plant, the animal and Man. According to Picton, for instance, the avoidance of denatured and processed foods was a sine qua non of long life and good health; indeed, there was even a chance of Britain being physically reborn if only her denizens would avoid such dreary comestibles. For the breast-feeding mother with her windy baby, the constipated clerk at his desk, or the flatulent labourer in the field, relief lay in a balanced diet free of pollution from artificial growth stimulants of any shape or form, and ultimately arising from a ‘natural’ soil. Strict recognition of the holistic interdependence and inseparability of natural processes, careful attention to the biology and microbiology of the soil, absolute commitment to the ‘Rule of Return’ and to ensuring high levels of humus in the top layer of the earth would yield the necessary diets. Mixed farming, based on strictly organic methods and recognising proven ecological relationships, was the way forward and ‘The grand principle and objective of agriculture is the continuous supply of fresh humus’. Or, as Eve Balfour put it, reminding us of the essentially Christian vision of the early organic school, salvation would come through ‘Service to God, service to our soil, service to each other, to the community and the world’.
Suspicious of inductive science, pro-self sufficiency, and vehemently opposed to farming systems which embraced the rapidly expanding repertoire of scientific and technological advances, most of these people claimed to be contemptuous of the profit motive. While it was relatively easy to adopt these lofty notions when in possession of a useful professional income or ample inherited funds, they struck a hollow note with the vast majority of working farmers of the 1930s and 1940s. Meanwhile, at the time these books were first published, the organicist call for small-scale farming and the resuscitation of the self-supporting peasantry seemed little short of risible to an agricultural establishment concerned first and foremost with feeding a nation isolated by war from external sources of food. The agricultural, economic, social and even political agenda of organicism would lay fallow for a generation. When it was rediscovered, some would say reinvented, in the 1960s, it was proselytised by individuals and groups whose leftish political stance was in stark contrast to that of the earlier pioneers.
Both Woodward and Conford argue that the reprinted volumes still have a powerful resonance today. Besides being finely written and passionately argued, all three books are a testament to absolute faith in a system of belief based entirely on the apparently logical idea that ‘natural law’ cannot be broken with impunity. Fair enough, but what exactly is ‘natural law’ in the organicist context? What is ‘nature’ to Eve Balfour? Is it Pope's ‘unerring Nature’, or is it ‘Nature methodized’? Throughout the texts, definition is slack and even shoddy, while each work, although to a lesser degree in Sir Albert Howard's case, is shot through with vague and nebulous terminology so that we are asked to accept at face value such terms as ‘vitality’, ‘quality’ and ‘fertility’ which are frankly meaningless in works purporting to carry practical authority. Animals fed on humus-grown crops, notes Howard on the basis of observation alone, developed resistance to disease, while plant pests were not the cause of disease, but a sign of the plant's poor viability. Tell this to a Lincolnshire farmer whose perfectly healthy wheat crop is ravaged by aphids in the middle of the summer, or to the Kenyan smallholder whose coffee plants are seized with coffee berry disease! The great problem with these and other organicist texts lies in the frequent willingness of their authors to allow blind faith to hold sway over scientific reality and common sense. Assumption, speculation and deduction, based on sometimes spurious principles and rarely upon controlled experimentation, lead to conclusions which are alarming and occasionally even dangerous. We are asked by these pioneering authors to accept the beneficial effects of mycorrhizal associations, although their very existence is disputed in some species. We are asked to believe that artificial fertilisers yield food of inferior quality when there is not an iota of evidence to sustain that view and we are asked to believe that the nitrogen absorbed by plants in the form of nitrate or ammonium ions is somehow different when derived from organic sources. To crown it all, we are expected to accept Balfour's argument that both the holistic nature of agricultural systems and the synergistic activity of nutrients makes investigation based on inductive research methodology largely impossible. This particular piece of hokum is still invoked today and is frequently trundled out as one of the reasons why academic organicists fail to embrace scientific and statistical methodology. Little wonder the world of conventional agriculture remains sceptical!
The reprinting of these three seminal works may well cause readers to reflect upon the remarkable fact that when they first saw the light of day their authors were regarded (to put it charitably) as obscurantist eccentrics whereas today their credo is widely accepted by a public brought up to regard the conventional farmer as a profit-seeking ogre bent upon wholesale environmental destruction. In contrast, the organic producer is perceived, and slickly marketed, as one farming hand-in-hand with Nature, adjusting his husbandry to her foibles and paying strict regard to her capricious needs. This would certainly apply to most organic producers, while only a fool would refute their arguments in favour of mixed farming, maintaining the integrity of soil structure, localism and the need to produce as much food as possible from our own resources. Although governments of the past two decades, grovelling spaniel-like before the Brussels bureaucrats, have chosen to ignore it, Picton's advice that we should ‘never return to the foolish dream of diminishing this island's productivity of food’ still rings true. Even a casual glance at much of the imported pabulum, both organic and conventional, lurking on the supermarket shelf lends strength to that particular argument. We need wholesome food, produced in an environmentally-friendly and humane manner, which is consumed as near as possible to the point of production. But should it necessarily be organic food?
The evidence in favour of organically-produced food is, to say the least, equivocal. Although a recent study (not yet subject to peer review) suggests enhanced anti-oxidant content of certain organic products, other studies have shown that organic milk, despite being one third more expensive than the conventional alternative, is deficient in a range of essential fat-soluble vitamins. Meanwhile, the potential dangers from higher levels of coliform bacteria in organic food are well-known. If the liberal media were to be believed, the public could be forgiven for thinking that the standard of animal welfare under organic systems was more acceptable than that achieved on conventional farms, be they intensive or extensive. Little could be further from the truth. I have seen organically-produced sheep languishing in conditions which would have earned their owner a lengthy prison sentence had the RSPCA witnessed the animals’ starved, worm-ridden and depressed state. Meanwhile, ‘organic’ cattle, pigs and poultry, denied a whole range of routine nutritional and veterinary procedures, often live in a wretched state. The long and short of it is that a farmer of any orientation who fails to pay attention to the physiological and psychological demands of his livestock is heading rapidly towards bankruptcy. All animals suffer to some degree for our convenience, and those who find this objectionable have no alternative but to become vegetarians.
Again, the media tediously perpetuate the urban myth of modern agriculture's ‘rape’ of the soil and the natural environment, which, it is naively argued, could be reversed by a wholesale shift towards organic production. During the twenty years following the war when there was a compelling need to maximise food production from British acres, grave environmental damage undoubtedly resulted. But if the producers and directors of radio and television programmes would take the trouble to enquire a little more closely and would occasionally abandon their four-wheel drive gas guzzlers and take a walk in the countryside, they would witness the enormous changes that have occurred in the past two decades. Technological and economic developments have meant that fertiliser and agrochemical usage is at a mere fraction of the levels of twenty years ago. In the meantime, the totality of the system of agricultural support has shifted in favour of environmental stewardship, so that hedges are being planted, woodlands renovated, ponds dug, ‘beetle banks’ created, and a whole swathe of management practices are being employed to encourage wildlife habitats. There is no longer any financial support for agriculture per se, and the industry is finally competing in the world market.
Some would argue that this has all gone a little too far and that we are in mortal danger of sacrificing future productivity on the altar of environmental conservation, and even worse, of concreting over some of our finest land to satisfy the demands of an (unsustainably?) rising population. Given the insatiable requirements for food by China and India, the conversion of millions of square miles across the world from cereals to biofuel production, recent harvest failures in Russia and its satellites, and the generalised effects of climate change, we may soon need every available acre. In which case, what price organic farming with its relatively low levels of productivity?
From a purely agricultural perspective, Lady Eve Balfour, Sir Albert Howard, Lionel Picton and their modern followers have little to teach us. On the other hand, the organicists’ insistence on localism has been a power for the good, while their slick marketing operations and successful courting of the supermarkets and the media has opened the eyes of a farming industry whose marketing competence has always lagged behind efficient technical practice. The early pioneers of the organic movement genuinely believed in the value of their cause. Little did they realise that ‘organic’ would eventually be equated with chic, aspiration and upward mobility. Like the absurd nonsense of drinking bottled water from Fiji, eating organic and thus eating expensively, would acquire a snob value which would only further intensify its socially-divisive connotations. Whether we can any longer afford this expensive indulgence is quite another matter.
