Fight the Future! How the Contemporary Campaigns of the UK Organic Movement Have Arisen from their Composting of the Past

Abstract

My subject is food, which concerns everyone; it is health, which concerns everyone; it is the soil, which concerns everyone -even if he does not realize it -and it is the history of certain recent scientific research linking three vital subjects (Lady Eve Balfour 1943, p. 9). S oil, health and food -Lady Eve spins out the three nodes of the discourse of organic agriculture and points to how she used science in an attempt to bind them together. Many of those who have either read about or been involved in organic agriculture will be familiar with the myth of Lady Eve. This paper seeks to revise that history and to bring to fore some forgotten elements of the past of the British organic movement. It is the contention of this paper that the present programmes and policies of the organic movement stem from a compost of the past, where the origins of some of the materials have been elided. That a small group of extreme nationalists played an important part in the formation of the early Soil Association is very uncomfortable for the contemporary movement to acknowledge. Without examining, the discursive legacy of this group the actions of the current movement cannot be fully explicated. It is perhaps time to reconsider the debt the discourse of the organic movement owes to those who were considered Fascists in their day.At the same time as considering the processes by which discourse 'forgets' that which it is politically difficult to acknowledge, the organic movement has been fighting the future projected by others. These futures have ranged from nitrogen fertilizers to genetically modified foods, each one described as progress and essential at that moment. Once the initial period of formation had passed, the process of eliding the elements of the past of the British organic movement became deliberate and necessary. Only through a forgetting of some elements of the past has it been possible to construct a discourse that is so persuasive today. In the 1930s, Food, Health and Soil were constructed as scientific metaphors, a collocation that over time became the subject of moral persuasion. It was not until the search for scientific proof was abandoned, when the business of establishing organic food and farming begins in earnest. Only by forgetting some of its own past has the organic movement's discourse been able to contest the futures of others to which it is so passionately opposed.

Ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption: Examining local organic food networks

“…The first sustainable consumption rationale for organic food is that it is a production method more in harmony with the environment and local ecosystems. By working with nature rather than against it, and replenishing the soil with organic material, rather than denuding it and relying upon artificial fertilisers, proponents claim that soil quality and hence food quality will be improved, biodiversity will be enhanced, and farmers can produce crops that have not resulted in large-scale industrial chemical inputs, with attendant pollution of waterways and land degradation (Reed, 2001); a second urge is to protect individual's health by avoiding ingestion of chemical pesticides. Today, the most commonly cited reasons for consuming organic food are: food safety, the environment, animal welfare, and taste (Soil Association, 2003).…”

“…As such, it has been representative of a movement towards the (re)localisation or shortening of food supply chains, and explicitly challenges the industrial farming and global food transport model embodied in conventional food consumption channelled through supermarkets (Reed, 2001). Localisation of food supply chains means simply that food should be consumed as close to the point of origin as possible.…”

Cultivating Alliances: The Local Organic Food Co-ops Network

“…The impetus for what coalesced into the organic movement came not simply from farmers but also from those working with the downstream impacts of the industrialization of agriculture, whether in deteriorating public health, soil infertility and pest outbreaks, livestock disease epidemics, rural community disintegration, or environmental degradation. In spite of the dubious politics associated with some members (see Reed, 2001), what unified these organic pioneers was the shared perception that soil, crop, livestock, and human health, as well as family and community health, were integrally and functionally related.…”

“Effectively organic”: Environmental gains on conventional farms through the market?

“…Organic farming in the UK is traced back to the 1920s and 1930s, but only gained coherence in the 1940s with the publication of Lady Eve Balfour's book "The Living Soil" and the founding of the Soil Association, which remains the largest certifier of organic farms in the UK (Reed, 2001). The Soil Association was founded on concerns about intensive agricultural production: soil erosion and depletion, decreased nutritional quality of intensively produced food, exploitation of animals in intensive units, and the impact of large intensive farming on the countryside and wildlife (Soil Association, 2010a).…”

“…The 'alternative' nature of organic production, along with ideals of localism, re-skilling of farmers and political mobilisation have given Tovey (1997) and others (e.g. Kaltoft, 2001;Reed, 2001) reason to characterise organic farming as a social movement.…”