"No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between man and a plot of land." -
Henry Ford
The backyard vegetable garden and compost is nothing new. In fact, it is home gardens that have sustained families throughout the millennia. From the time hunter/gatherer tribes learned they could harness the power of nature by planting and growing food some 12,000 years ago, gardening has been central to human civilization. It is not an exaggeration to even say that the family vegetable garden is directly responsible for the birth and sustenance of early civilization.
The Industrial Age
In the dawn of the 20th century, more and more people began leaving their family farms for industrialized urban areas. With the availability of farmer's markets and later, grocery stores, where there was an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruits readily available, fewer people grew their own food. For those who did, it was often little more than an enjoyable hobby with the benefit of bragging rights when their delicious home-grown produce was put on the family dinner table.
The invention of the internal combustion engine introduced a new era of the tractor and other farm machinery. The small family farms were increasingly swallowed by larger specialized agricultural operations to maximize the use and efficiency of the machinery. The small family farms with gardens growing tomatoes, corn, beans, cabbage and multiple other varieties side-by-side were replaced by large single crop acreage sown and harvested by machinery.
The early 20th century also saw the introduction of abundant and inexpensive synthetic chemical fertilizers. No longer were gardeners and farmers dependent on humus, or organic materials, that comes from natural sources such as manure, dead plant material and the like. Composting became an increasingly lost art replaced by advancements in chemistry and mining.
The Controversy Begins
There were voices critical of these new chemical developments in agriculture. One of the first, and most influential, was botanist Sir Albert Howard. Studying farming methods in India, he came to regard their more “primitive” natural methods to be superior to the conventional science of the day. He was joined by Rudolf Steiner in Germany who also advocated the healthy interaction of soil, animals and plants.
Another who added to the growing body of organic farming studies was Lady Eve Balfour in England with her 1939 Haughley Experiment, the first comparative study of organic and conventional farming methods. In Japan, microbiologist Masanobu Fukuoka, developed a new natural method of farming grain without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or tilling.
The Victory Garden
World War II resulted in a tremendous growth of family gardens called “Victory Gardens”. It is estimated that 20 million Americans turned their yards and neighborhood empty lots into vegetable gardens. With gasoline and rubber rationing making it more difficult to transport produce to markets, these small gardens helped to ease food shortages in urban areas, producing up to 40% of the total produce consumed. By canning their produce as well, commercially canned products could be reserved for the troops.
Influential to this movement was Jerome Rodale's 1942 introduction of the magazine Organic Farming and Gardening. With his associate editor, Sir Albert Howard, the magazine took the organic message to the masses. Now known simply as Organic Gardening, it still in publication and still popular today.
Technologies developed during WWII introduced even greater use of synthetic fertilizers along with petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides. Ammonium nitrate, used by the military for munitions, was re-packaged for use as inexpensive fertilizer. Insecticides, such as DDT, used during the war to protect the troops in malaria infested areas came into widespread agricultural use.
The Emergence of Organic Gardening
The publication of naturalist Rachel Carson's best selling book, Silent Spring, in 1962 shocked the world and brought to the forefront the environmental dangers of the agricultural practices of the day. It resulted in the banned use of DDT as well as a greater interest in organic gardening.
Consumers grew increasingly concerned about the quality of the produce they were feeding their families. The social revolution of the 1960s saw a move towards more self-sufficient living and support of home and locally grown produce. With few organic choices generally available until much later, this was the only way to get organically grown produce.
Since the 1980s, the demand for organic produce and toxin free baby products continues to grow. Trust in the commercial marketplace has also continued to deteriorate resulting in government certification of organic products. Still, that mistrust has encouraged many more to plant their own organic gardens fed by the compost of their recycled organic waste.
Even big city dwellers have created organic “bucket” gardens and now “vertical” gardens on patios to grow healthy vegetables and organic garden herbs. The flavor of fresh-picked home-grown vegetables and organic herbs is incomparable to anything one can purchase at the market and has the added security of knowing it is safe and grown without toxic chemicals.
