by Eliot Coleman

"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
--Mahatma K. Gandhi

Thor Heyerdahl's classic adventure story, The Ra Expeditions, has a lesson for agriculture. Heyerdahl wanted to prove that ancient Egyptian sailors could have reached the new world in traditional boats made of bundled papyrus stalks. He and his crew studied fresco paintings, three to four thousand years old, on the tomb walls of pyramids for instruction on how to construct the crafts. In the paintings there was one rope represented, from the in-curled tip of the stern down to the afterdeck, for which they could discern no purpose according to modern physics, and in the ensuing construction it was left out. Ra I collapsed in mid-ocean for lack of that rope. Their second attempt, Ra II, with the newly appreciated rope in its assigned place, completed the voyage without a hitch. As Heyerdahl puts it, "Ra II . . . was perfectly designed and crossed the Atlantic without loss or damage to a single papyrus stem."

In the story of agriculture's transition from the natural knowledge of the past to the chemical realities of the present, there was a part left out which is the rope's equivalent -- an unappreciated part without which the boat will fall apart. That crucial part is called "soil organic matter." In the mid-1930s, organic farming arose from a recognition of the vital importance of this soil ingredient. Some farmers saw the undesirable changes in their soil and the diminished health of their livestock that followed the shift to chemical farming in the 20th century. Their appreciation for soil organic matter was reborn. They realized that they needed to return to pre-chemical practices, and improve them if possible, rather than reject them in favor of chemical shortcuts. They believed this was the direction in which they needed to go if the health of the soil, the health of the produce, and the health of the human beings consuming the produce were to be maintained. Some of their improvements included more successful methods of compost making, better management of crop residues -- the leaves, roots, or stems that are left after harvest -- and adding mineral nutrients, where necessary, in their most natural form.

The organic pioneers wrote and spoke about their realization that the farm is not a factory, but rather a human-managed microcosm of the natural world. Whether in forest or prairie, soil fertility in the natural world is maintained and renewed by the recycling of all plant and animal residues which create the organic matter in the soil. This recycling is a biological process, which means that the most important contributors to soil fertility are alive, and they are neither farmers nor fertilizer salesmen. They are the population of living creatures in the soil -- whose life processes make the plant-food potential of the soil accessible to plants -- and their food is organic matter.

The number of these creatures is almost beyond belief. It is often said that a teaspoon of fertile soil contains at least one million live microscopic organisms. Hard to believe as one million may be, the number is now considered far too conservative. Once you begin to understand that the soil is a living thing rather than an inert substance, a fascinating universe opens in front of your eyes. I once watched a specialist on soil creatures perform a minor miracle. He held the rapt attention of a roomful of teenagers by showing slides and telling tales of the endlessly interrelated and meticulously choreographed activities of these creatures. The students were entranced because the subject matter was like a trip to another planet. They were peeking into the secret world of nature.

The idea of a living soil nourished with organic matter also helps cast light on the difference between a natural and a chemical approach to soil fertility. In the chemical approach, fertilizers are created in a factory to put a limited number of nutrients in a soluble form within reach of plant roots. The chemical idea is to bypass the soil and start feeding the plants directly with preprocessed plant food. In the natural approach, the farmer adds organic matter to nurture all those hard-working soil organisms. The natural approach is usually called feeding the soil rather than feeding the plants but what it's really doing is feeding the soil creatures and that is why it works so well. The idea that we could ever substitute a few soluble elements for a whole living system is a lot like thinking an intravenous needle could deliver a delicious meal.

It is important to stress that what has been accomplished to get organic farming from the early pioneers to where it is today is the story of a groundswell of natural truths flourishing in the face of a passel of corporate/industrial lies. I remember the situation very well as it was when I started back in 1965. The forces were definitely arrayed against us. The defenders of the chemical side, claiming that organic farming was foolish and impossible, were the USDA with its scientists and its enormous budget, all of the land grant universities and smaller schools of agriculture, the extension service, every feed and seed store in the country, and of course the enormous money and power of the massive agrochemical industry. On our side, claiming not only that organic farming worked but that it worked much better than chemical farming, were a few old-time large-scale farmers who had never bought into chemicals in the first place and a bunch of idealistic young newcomers who wanted to farm and who found the concepts of organic farming totally in line with their thinking about humanity, sustainability, and the welfare of the planet. When a study came out in 1977 from Barry Commoner's group at Washington University in Saint Louis showing that in a side by side, paired up comparison a group of Midwestern organic farmers were just as successful as their chemical using neighbors, it was the first eye opener of the world to come. The other side had no idea we were that good. There were some newspaper and magazine articles but far less press than this should have received if the public had been aware of the massively unequal array of forces on the opposing sides. In my mind what had just happened was the equivalent of your local junior high football team splitting a home and away series with the Oakland Raiders. The type of press those football games would get in the sports pages, is what this incident deserved.

The first of a number of studies positive to organic farming had begun appearing in the early 1970's. I had a friend at the USDA and I used to call him up as each one of these appeared. He was consistently dismissive. The first one I told him about was a very positive study by a French farmer's organization. "Ha!", he scoffed, "The USDA isn't going to pay any attention to a bunch of French farmers." A couple of years later a significant study was done by the Dutch department of agriculture. " Ha!" he scoffed, "The USDA isn't going to listen to the Dutch department of agriculture." Then the Washington University study came out. "Ha! The USDA isn't going to listen to Washington University." I had lost touch with him by 1980 when the USDA's own very positive study, Report and Recommendations on Organic Agriculture, came out but I would not have been surprised if he had said, "Ha! You don't expect the USDA to pay attention to the USDA do you?"

And that was, truly, the sad state of affairs. As a fearless early organic farmer I used to accept all invitations to speak. To be prepared, I did my homework and I spent countless evenings in the stacks of the local university library. I found an enormous number of applicable academic studies, which reinforced the basic tenets of organic farming, published in the major agricultural journals. Occasionally, my speaking invitations were from universities themselves. I can remember a number of those instances. During my talk I would have made a point about soil fertility or plant/pest relationships and there would be an interruption from the audience. "Oh, yes, you're Dean Smith, aren't you?", I would acknowledge the questioner. "Go ahead, what is your question?" "Well, that is the most ridiculous statement I ever heard," he would huff. "Where did that foolishness come from?" "Hmm," I would say innocently, "lets see -- that's from a study by Jones published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, January, 1967, pages 172 to 181. Haven't you . . . read it?"

In other words, the myth that organic farming could not work was so ingrained, so much like a religious belief, that it was accepted out of hand by agricultural university faculty members who were not reading, or if reading, then not paying attention to the published literature in their own fields. And, of course, none of them had ever investigated it in person. If the reason for the general disbelief among agrochemical minds was that these ideas were brand new, then some of their disbelief might be understandable. But they are anything but new. Many of the books I read when I started out in 1965, books that extolled the benefits of a biological rather than chemical understanding of farming, were already 10 years old like P. H. Hainsworth's Agriculture: A New Approach (1954) or almost 20 years old like Leonard Wickenden's Make Friends With Your Land (1949) or more than 30 years old like Selman Waksman's The Soil and The Microbe (1931). Other excellent volumes had been published as much as 70 years earlier. But these ideas were hardly new then. Read K. D. White's tome Roman Farming and you will find that the benefits of compost, green manures, mixed farming, crop rotations in general and legume rotations in particular were basic knowledge 2000 years ago. Read F. H. King's Farmers of Forty Centuries and you realize they were common knowledge 4000 years ago. Of course they were. How do you think agriculture managed for all those years?

In fact you don't even have to go beyond material published by the USDA itself to be convinced that organic ideas represent sound agricultural thinking. The 1938 Yearbook of the US Department of Agriculture, Soils and Men, reads like a basic organic farming textbook with sentences like, "While the continuous use of chemical fertilizers tends to deplete the essential elements not supplied to the soil, the use of stable manure, leaf mold, wood ashes and peat tends to conserve them... In some cases soil deficiencies are not revealed by any effect on plant growth, yet the plant is not being supplied with a sufficient quantity of some elements to produce a normal healthy growth of animals feeding on it." And the 1957 Yearbook, Soil, is even more emphatic, "All these experiments point to profound effects of fertilization on the nutritional quality of a plant. . . we will have to determine the balance of plant nutrients in the soil that will produce a plant of optimum nutritional quality."

So how was it in the mid 1960's that organic farming, which concerned itself with exactly the issues raised in those quoted statements, was ridiculed, and chemical farming was called conventional' agriculture? It wasn't done by the farmers. It was imposed upon them by scientists and merchandisers. Let me tell a metaphorical story from my background. Before I got into farming I was an adventurer. One of my passions was rock climbing. My thinking is still patterned by that rock climbing background. It makes me a problem solver. It makes me adore challenges. Rock climbers, like farmers, are interested in solutions, each one simpler and more elegant than the last. Whereas the rock cliff scientist, if I may invent such a character, might spend time speculating on the coefficient of friction and surface fracturing between the granitic base and the basalt outcropping or invoking the law of gravity, and the rock cliff merchandiser might be speculating on what products could be sold to palliate the impossible, the rock climbers are down at the bottom of the "impossible" cliff quietly studying and planning how to climb it. To the climbers it is a challenge. To the climbers a problem is something to be solved not something to be studied to death or marketed.

This distinction occurs in part because of the positions from which the different parties see the situation. The scientists and merchandisers are standing out far away from the cliff, looking over at it, indulging in their love of reductionism and speculating on the difficulties. The climbers (like farmers) are standing right next to the problem, celebrating their love of solutions and speculating on the possibilities. Where you are looking from and what your goals are determine what you see and what you do. My goals as a farmer are to solve problems, to overcome difficulties, and do it with my own resources. The goals of the scientists and merchandisers are to study problems, to emphasize the difficulties, and to recommend purchased palliatives.

The implications of this situation are clear. If the cliff can be climbed -- and I assure you that it can be -- then there are only two options open to the merchandisers and the scientists. First, they can admit that their science and their merchandise are unnecessary because solving the problem has required only imagination and determination. Or, second, they can use all their resources to manipulate the situation through spin and obfuscation so that very few people will know about the climbers and their elegant solution and the general public will continue to believe it impossible. In other words to create the climate of ignorance and opposition that organic farming has faced from the start.

The reason for this still very active attempt to villainize organic farming is that our success scares the hell out of the other side. Just like the fear of Nature that the merchandisers and scientists have worked so hard to create in farmers, in order to make purchased chemical products and reductionist science seem indispensable, so has our success with organic farming created in the scientists and merchandisers a terrible fear -- a fear of their own redundancy. A fear that agriculture will realize that other solutions are possible. A fear that agriculture will learn the truth. Organic farmers have succeeded in producing a bounty of food through the simple means of working in harmony with natural processes, without any help from the scientists and the merchandisers. If us rock climbers/farmers can make it up that impossible cliff on our own, then we have proved them to be very dispensable indeed, and we are consequently very frightening.

Since the 1930s, organic farming has been subjected to the traditional three-step progression that occurs with any new idea directly challenging an orthodoxy. First the orthodoxy dismisses it. Then it spends decades contesting its validity. Finally, moves to take it over. Now that organic agriculture has become an obvious economic force, industrial agriculture wants to control it. Since the first step in controlling a process is to define (or redefine) it, the U.S. Department of Agriculture hastened to influence the setting of organic standards -- in part by establishing a legal definition of the word "organic" -- and the organic spokespeople naively permitted it.

Wise people had long warned against such a step. Thirty years ago, Lady Eve Balfour, one of the most knowledgeable organic pioneers from the 1930s, said, "I am sure that the techniques of organic farming cannot be imprisoned in a rigid set of rules. They depend essentially on the attitude of the farmer. Without a positive and ecological approach, it is not possible to farm organically." When I heard Lady Eve make that statement at an international conference on organic farming at Sissach, Switzerland, in 1977, the co-option and redefinition of organic by the USDA was far in the future. I knew very well what she meant though, because by that time I had been involved long enough to have absorbed the old-time organic ideas and I was alert to see the changes that were beginning to appear.

When you study the history of almost any new idea it becomes clear how the involvement of the old power structure in the new paradigm tends to move things backwards. Minds mired in an industrial thinking pattern, where farmers are merely sources of raw materials, can not see beyond the outputs of production. They don't normally consider the values of production nor the economic benefits to the producers. While co-opting and regulating the organic method, the USDA ignored the organic goal. And since it is the original organic goal, and not the modern redirection set on course by the USDA, which I believe can save the family farm, we need to know the difference. To better convey this difference, I like to borrow two words from the ecology movement and refer to "deep" organic farming and "shallow" organic farming.

Deep-organic farmers, after rejecting agricultural chemicals, look for better ways to farm. Inspired by the elegance of Nature's systems, they try to mimic the patterns of the natural world's soil-plant economy. They use freely available natural soil foods like deep rooting legumes, green manures, and composts to correct the causes of an infertile soil by establishing a vigorous soil life. They acknowledge that the underlying cause of pest problems (insects and diseases) is plant stress; they know they can avoid pest problems by managing soil tilth, nutrient balance, organic matter content, water drainage, air flow, crop rotations, varietal selection and other factors to reduce plant stress. In so doing, deep-organic farmers free themselves from the need to purchase fertilizers and pest-control products from the industrial supply network -- the mercantile businesses that normally put profits in the pockets of middlemen and put family farms on the auction block. The goal of deep-organic farming is to grow the most nutritious food possible and to respect the primacy of a healthy planet. Needless to say, the industrial agricultural establishment sees this approach as a threat to the status quo since it is not an easy system for outsiders to quantify, to control, and to profit from.

Shallow-organic farmers, on the other hand, after rejecting agricultural chemicals, look for quick-fix inputs. Trapped in a belief that the natural world is inadequate, they end up mimicking the patterns of chemical agriculture. They use bagged or bottled organic fertilizers in order to supply nutrients that temporarily treat the symptoms of an infertile soil. They treat the symptoms of plant stress -- insect and disease problems -- by arming themselves with the latest natural organic weapons. In so doing, the shallow-organic farmers continue to deliver themselves into the control of an industrial supply network that is only too happy to sell them expensive symptom treatments. The goal of shallow-organic farming is merely to follow the approved guidelines and respect the primacy of international commerce. The industrial agricultural establishment looks on shallow-organic farming as an acceptable variation of chemical agribusiness since it is an easy system for the industry to quantify, to control, and to profit from in the same ways it has done with chemical farming. Shallow organic farming sustains the dependence of farmers on middlemen and fertilizer suppliers. Today, major agribusinesses are creating massive shallow organic operations, and these can be as hard on the family farm as chemical farming ever was.

The difference in approach is a difference in life views. The shallow view regards the natural world as consisting of mostly inadequate, usually malevolent systems which must be modified and improved. The deep-organic view understands that the natural world consists of impeccably designed, smooth-functioning systems that must be studied and nurtured. The deep-organic pioneers learned that farming in partnership with the natural processes of soil organisms also makes allowance for the unknowns. The living systems of a truly fertile soil contain all sorts of yet-to-be discovered benefits for plants -- and consequently for the livestock and humans who consume them. These are benefits we don't even know how to test for because we are unaware of their mechanism, yet deep organic farmers are conscious of them every day in the improved vigor of their crops and livestock. This practical experience of farmers is unacceptable to scientists who disparagingly call it mere "anecdotal evidence." Good farmers contend that since most scientists lack familiarity with real organic farming, they are passing judgment on things they know nothing about.

It is difficult for organic farmers to defend ideas scientifically where so little scientific data has yet been collected. However, the passion is there because the farmer's instincts are so powerfully sure that differences exist between organic and chemical. I often cite an experience of mine in an unrelated field -- music -- in defense of the farmer's instincts. Twice I have been fortunate to hear great artists perform in an intimate setting without the intermediary of a sound system. The first was a sax player, the second a soprano. The experience of hearing their clear, pure tones directly, not missing whatever subtleties a microphone and speakers are incapable of transmitting, was so different and the direct ingestion of the sound by my ears was so nourishing (that is the only word I can think of), that I remember the sensation to this day, and use it as a metaphor for differences in food quality. That unfiltered music is like fresh food grown by a local deep organic grower. That same music heard through a sound system is like industrial organic produce shipped from far away. Through a poor sound system, it is a lot like chemically grown produce.

Like most other farmers, I am aware of the reaction of my customers, especially young customers, as evidence of the advantages of organic over chemical farming. Children are notorious for hating vegetables, but that is not what I hear from parents in the neighboring towns in response to the vegetables we grow on our farm. The eating quality of our vegetables has won out over all the junk food advertising. We have been told that our carrots are the trading item of choice in local grade school lunch boxes. We have been told by stunned parents that not only will their children eat our salad and eat our spinach, they ask their parents specifically to purchase them. I put great faith in the honest and unspoiled taste buds of children. They can still detect differences that older taste buds may miss and that science cannot measure.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk alerting us to the takeover of many organic labels by the industrial food giants. But to anyone who worries about the survival of small farms, I say the sky is not falling. These takeovers only involve industrial shallow organics. They only involve those companies large enough to attract takeover money. Most of these companies sell processed foods, which are substandard nutritionally, whatever the provenance of their ingredients. When the organic version of the Twinkie eventually appears, it will be immaterial who controls it. Some of these companies do sell staple foods, but they only meet the shallowest of standards, thus ignoring those valuable production practices that only family farmers seem to care about any more.

In other words the only organic companies that have been bought out are those whose quality is so dubious you don't want to buy their food no matter how many times they can legally print the word organic on the label. Real food comes from your local small farms, run by deep-organic farmers. These farms won't be bought out because they are too honest and too focused on quality over quantity to attract the takeover specialists. Small, committed, organic family farms are the fastest growing segment in U.S. agriculture today. Old-time deep-organic farming will save these farms because there will always be a demand for exceptional food by astute customers who can see past the hype of the USDA label and realize the importance of making their own fully informed decisions about food quality.

In Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon says, " If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." The question we now need to ask is not "is it organic?" but rather "is it nutritious?". I firmly believe that quality food is vital to the well being of humans and other animals. Therefore, as a grower, I have an awesome responsibility. Organic farming has to be much more than the absence of the negatives -- chemicals and pesticides. The area where organic farming must excel is the presence of the positives -- the full nutritional complement of the foodstuff. I have read a number of articles by paleopathologists who have studied the skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers. Most significantly, they remark on the superior health and stature of the hunter gatherers compared to modern humans. They attribute the difference to the very natural diet which our ancestors ate. Well, since deep organic agriculture is a human managed copy of natural processes, we have it in our power to make our agricultural products as nutritious as those wild foods. We need to make sure we are managing those processes with the greatest possible skill and care to produce food that contains everything Nature designed it to contain. That means varieties chosen for taste and nutritional value, two factors that are closely related. That means creating growing conditions aimed at optimizing the plants physiological potential. The soil's ability to deliver every mineral in balance is the key to that goal and we pay close attention to trace elements, soil aeration, and making exceptional compost.

The success of organic farmers has proven that it is best for the health of the soil not to have our soil food manipulated by industry. Doesn't it follow logically that it is best for the health of humans not to have our human food treated that way. The food we eat should obviously be fresh but I mostly want it to be what I call "real". I can't imagine a livestock farmer feeding hay with parts removed, or silage with preservatives, or ultra-pasteurized milk to a calf, or a grain ration made with white flour, hydrogenated soy margarine and sugar. Surprisingly, products like that, with "organic" labels, are sold in "health food" stores to be fed to people. That is not my idea of organic. Our vegetables fill the produce cooler of our local food co-op. That is "real food." But the shelves overflowing with over-processed junk in the rest of the store are not in the same category. One day at lunch when I was ranting about this. I said I wanted to open a store that only sold "real food". My wife Barbara, who tries to bring order to my more extreme impulses with gentle humor, said that was nice and she had the perfect name for the store. I could call it the "Wholier Than Thou Market."

Well, I am very serious about the need for such a store although I'm sure I don't have time to open it. I offer the idea and the store name to anyone who would like to take the next step beyond where industrial pressure has stalled the organic movement. This food store would sell nothing packaged. Breads and crackers would be whole and made fresh daily. There would be no aged bags of flour but only whole grains for the customer to grind into fresh flour with the store's mill. Milk would be raw from a local grass fed herd and so would the butter. If you wanted juices they would be squeezed fresh into your own glass container. Meat, poultry and eggs would be local and range fed. The produce would be fresh year-round from nearby fields and greenhouses. The only processed foods would be the traditional ones like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles, dried tomatoes, wine and beer. The only sweeteners would be honey and maple syrup. Real food. We all know what it is.

You can easily imagine the displeasure of the food processors with the "Wholier Than Thou Market." They are already dismayed at nutritionist Joan Gussow's truthful reference to their products as "value added, nutritionally degraded." But I'm convinced that it is in the best interest of healthy humans to make food processors redundant. Furthermore, all the items in the "Wholier Than Thou Market" would be purchased directly from nearby growers. No middlemen, no energy intensive long distance shipping, no need for preservatives. Whoops! We have just made a few other mercantile groups redundant.

Is this radical? Possibly. But then organic farming seemed pretty radical when I started. Does it make sense? Well, the implications of a large body of nutrition research back it up. Will humans embrace the idea? That depends. The propaganda from the food processors tries to make us think their food is better just like the propaganda from the chemical companies tried to make us believe their fertilizers were better. Both assertions are false. In the cases of both eaters and farmers, they were sucked in by the intentionally addictive nature of the processed foods and processed fertilizers and the relentless advertising behind them. We must now decide that we want to take charge of our body's nourishment as successfully as we have taken charge of our soil's nourishment. Real food, whether for the soil or for the body, takes more time and more commitment. But the reward is the perfect world we would all like to see. Happy, healthy children and adults optimally nourished with exceptional quality food. The drug companies then become redundant also.

So, how did deep get turned into shallow and good food revert to mediocre? It is a logical result in a world blind to the elegance of natural systems. Humans think in terms of more milk rather than exceptional milk; cheaper eggs not better eggs. Since modern humans mistakenly consider nature imperfect, they focus on improving nature rather than seeking to improve our understanding of agriculture and human nutrition within a perfect nature. Humans want to change the rules rather than try to operate more intelligently within them. A recent advertisement from a biotech company pointed that out by highlighting the phrase, "Think what's possible." Yes, it's true that these companies think they have the power to remake the parts of nature they don't understand. However, if they understood them, they would realize they don't need remaking. It is just our human relationship with the natural world that needs remaking.

The historian Howard Zinn has written, "The truth is so often the reverse of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it." Organic farmers have done an admirable job since the 1930's in turning heads around to see the whole truth about soil nutrition. It is my hope that the universal year-round availability of fresh, local, "real" food grown by deep organic farmers can allow us to turn heads around far enough to clearly see the whole truth about human nutrition as well.