The Uses of History: Pioneering Organic Farmers and Old Agricultural Books.

The history of organic farming has received relatively little attention from historians to date; and the few book-length treatments have tended to consider organic farming primarily as a history of ideas.  But if organic farming begins in philosophy it must be elaborated within the specific geographic conditions of individual farms.  The relationship between literature and practice has been curiously intertwined in American organic agricultural history from an early period, thanks in part to the dual impulses of J.I. Rodale, sometimes called "the father of the organic movement in America," as both publisher and amateur farmer.  Rodale played a key early role in making the writings of Sir Albert Howard, Friend Sykes and other British agriculturists available in the United States in the years after World War II, but it was two or three decades before a recognizable group of U.S. organic farmers would emerge.  J.I. Rodale's son, Robert Rodale, in his turn helped usher in a new era of textual production within the organic movement with the founding of The New Farm, a magazine by, for and about sustainable and organic producers.  But in the absence of meaningful help from existing agricultural institutions, many would-be organic farmers in the 1960s and '70s turned to two alternatives: 1) older neighbors with memories of farming before the wide availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and 2) old agricultural books.  Although both categories are now in danger of being lost or forgotten, they remain critically important.  This paper will draw on interviews with senior-level organic farmers to sketch a history of organic farming as it drew not just on ideals, but on the practical knowledge—both oral and written—of previous generations.  What emerges is a more heterogeneous organic tradition engaged in an active repurposing of the "conventional" agricultural past.