Organic Food History

The fact is that all farming and ranching was done with what are now considered organic methods before the 1900s. It’s not that farmers and ranchers were more conscious or more concerned about natural resource conservation or even more concerned about pollution. It was because there simply was no other choice. “Progress” hadn’t happened yet. The history of organic food production goes back to when our first distant ancestor put a seed into the ground with the intention of eating what the plant produced.

The fact is that the idea of “fertilizing” crops with anything other than manure wasn’t even on the horizon before Columbus discovered America. The Indians showed the colonists how to use fish as fertilizer and improve crop production.

Nonorganic food production techniques can be traced back to the first commercially produced chemical fertilizers in the early 1900s. Although pesticides made from natural ingredients like tobacco had been used for years, the first synthetic pesticides only began somewhere around 1940 with the discovery (invention) of DDT.

Somewhere along the way, we began to accept food that was produced using chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and drugs as “traditional” farming and ranching methods. They are far from being traditional. Organic farming and ranching methods are actually traditional, and what are considered “traditional” methods are, in fact, the new kids on the block, so to speak.

Then during the late 1980s and early 1990s, people began to question the safety of “traditionally” produced food. The EPA now regulates the use of pesticides on crops. The FDA regulates the allowable levels of pesticide on food.

There are now standards that allow a certain level of pesticide to remain on the fruits and vegetables that are at our local supermarket as well as acceptable levels of antibiotics and growth hormones in the meat that is available. But historically – TRADITIONALLY – food was produced without the use of chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and drugs.




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