Organic Agriculture's Ongoing Contribution to Soil Health and the Oeconomy.

This talk will review the organic movement’s contributions to the soil health paradigm and consider how it can continue to provide leadership to those wanting to promote a productive, ethically and ecologically responsible agriculture. The soil health paradigm embraced by organic agriculture grew out of scientific and social movements reacting to modern agriculture and reductionist approaches to research that rejected natural philosophy that retained Aristotelian notions and a commitment to holism. The nature-based conceptualization of the Oeconomy that connected nutrient cycling to societal health in the late 19^th century was replaced in the 20th by the mineralist theory and ultimately 21^st century market standards that use either aspirational (eg: organic) or technocratic (eg: commodities) metrics as guide posts. The talk will review soil health metrics that have evolved thanks in large part to proponents of organic and alternative agriculture and highlight examples that have definitively shown how the combination of tillage and high fertilization in annually cropped soils can degrade soil health and the systems that rely upon it by reducing root activity, simplifying foodweb structure and accelerating decay rates. It will review Tier 1 and Tier 2 soil health metrics being mainstreamed by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Cornell Soil Health Test, and the Soil Health Partnership and ask whether these or other tests satisfy demands for metrics that are practical, accurate and informative. It will then review possible Tier 3 indicators that might help users manage nutrient cycling and the microbiome to satisfy organic agricultures’ version of the soil health paradigm. Finally, it will consider how soil health metrics might be used beyond the farm to satisfy performance based standards that are being used by buyers. Hopefully the presentation will successfully argue that rather than rest on its much deserved laurels, the organic standard must evolve to ensure that it fulfills its promise to care for the soil and surrounding ecosystems and provide support for a diversity of species while encouraging nutrient cycling and mitigating soil and nutrient losses.