How did growing organic come about?
Relatively it wasn’t that long ago that everything was naturally organic, back 75 to 100 years ago the population didn’t have to think about buying organic food, it just was.
A little history how it began, during the First World War ammonia was used to manufacture explosives, it wasn’t long after the war they found a use for it and integrated ammonia into the fertilization of agriculture because the ammonia synthesis process made use of the nitrogen from the atmosphere. This made the plants nice and green but lacked nutrition and cause havoc with our bodies.
This was the beginning of the synthetic fertilizer industry. It went down hill from there.
Back in 1940 an English Farmer, philosopher, writer, Oxford University lecturer in agriculture, and Olympic silver medalist, named Lord Northbourne wrote a book titled “Look to the Land” and within his writings he coined the words organic farming and presented the dangers of its use.
Being a farmer himself he was very aware back then of the adverse affects when he wrote “In the long run, the results of attempting to substitute chemical farming for organic farming are probably far more deleterious than has yet become clear.” Instinctively he sensed the hazards it would cause to the environment and ourselves in years to come.
Fortunately, the organic movement has grown to a 47 billion in food sales in 2016 and growing by billions every year. We still have a long way to go to tip the scales. It’s a great start!
Now there are convenient helpful Apps for our phones that will help us make safer food choices. I found one free app that I like called Organic Buddy. It lets me know which foods are safe to buy non- organic and which ones I should only buy organic. I like the Farmers Market feature too where it shows you by state where they’re located, websites and more. It’s pretty cool. Check it out.