Organic
agriculture is a multifaceted phenomenon in the field of agriculture and food
production. On the one hand, it is a low external input production technique
originating from both traditional and alternative farming practices developed
in the late 19th and early 20th century and from European and
USA
contexts of intensive agriculture. On the other hand, it reflects societal
debates on the sustainability of agriculture, on food quality and nutritional
habits and on ethical issues like animal welfare. A growing number of
scientists and policy makers qualify organic agriculture as an efficient and
holistic approach to reach the multiple goals of agriculture including food
security, sustainable use of natural resources and the dignity of creatures
(Jaber, 2000).
Organic
farming is a food production method defined at great length in many
international (e.g. Codex Alimentarius), supranational (e.g. EU Regulation on
Organic Farming) and national (e.g. the US National Organic Program (NOP), the
Japanese Agricultural Standard for Organic Products (JAS) or the Swiss
Regulation on Organic Farming) standards.
In
the developed world, crop production was intensified in the 19th and first half
of the 20th century by the use of commercial fertilizers. Soluble phosphorus
and nitrogen triggered a first increase in yield levels. The next step in the
intensification of agriculture was the widespread use of insecticides,
fungicides and herbicides, a practice that also made many conventional farmers
feel uncomfortable. The pursuit of yield increases also took hold in livestock
husbandry, leading to changes in feeding regimes, industrialized methods for
keeping animals and increasing use (and misuse) of veterinary medicines (e.g.
antibiotics, anthelmintics) and growth hormones. The arrival andcontinuous
expansion of organic farming has to be seen against this background of
continuous intensification of food production and the associated negative
impact on environment and biodiversity (Stolze
et al., 2000; Stoate et al.,
2001; Pyček et al., 2005).
Although
it is perceived by the public as a rather uniform and regulated farming method,
organic farming has had a range of origins and a multifaceted development until
standardization started in Europe in the late 1980s. The most important of
these historical food and farming concepts are described in this chapter.
Although in some cases only of historical interest, these concepts reveal the
background of modern organic farming and food processing and help to elucidate
some of its characteristics.
Lately,
the progress in organic farming has been dominated by standard setting, their
harmonization and the introduction of equal certificates. These activities were
driven by (a) fears among organic
farmers that organic standards and principles may be compromised by competing
strategies like integrated pest management (IPM) or integrated production (IP),
(b) consumers who wanted protection from deceit and (c) emerging markets (in
particular supermarket chains) in search of certified quality standards. In
food markets worldwide, organic foods represented the first food standards,
which defined, audited and certified a specific food production process
(tracking) rather than specific product properties (e.g. size or colour of
vegetables) or composition of the end product (tracing). Such a
process-oriented approach in quality management was necessary as organic and
conventional foods were difficult to distinguish.
History
of different food concepts of organic farming
One
of the earliest sources of inspiration for organic farming was the concept of
naturalness of foods. It derived from
different ecosocial movements of the early 20th century like the ‘naturalist’,
the ‘vegetarian’ and the ‘reform’ philosophies. Of particular influence was the
German Lebensreform movement, which became important during the
time of the Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933). Deteriorations in the living
conditions of people during the transition from an agrarian to an
industrialised society were correlated with the ‘unnaturalness’ of the living
conditions of the cities (Vogt, 2000). Back to nature was seen as an escape and
alternative. Medical doctors and nutritionists
like
Werner Kollath, Max Bircher-Benner or Stefan Steinmetz propagated whole food
(raw vegetables and fruits, whole meal bread or muesli). In this context, the
pioneers of ‘natural’ husbandry and gardening, the Germans Julius Hensel,
Heinrich Bauernfeind, Ewald Könemann or the Swiss Mina Hofstetter, experimented
– among other farming and gardening techniques – with different rock powders as
natural fertilizers to cure the negative effects of mineral sources of
nutrients (Vogt, 2000). It can be concluded that ‘natural’ husbandry was the
first concept of organic farming in Europe, which developequickly from lifestyle
movements in the 1920s to an alternative farming method based on the emerging
soil and agricultural sciences and on practical farming and gardening
experience in the 1930s.
Such
idealistic ‘back to nature’ movements also developed in other parts of Europe.
Almost contemporaneously, a group of British writers including Harold John
Massingham, Adrian Bell and Rolf Gardiner, promoted their vision of a
revitalised countryside (Moore-Colyer, 2001). Central to this vision was an
agriculture based on organic principles and this movement became one of the
origins of Soil Association which was founded in 1946.
The
concept of the vitality of food was raised for the first time by Rudolf Steiner
in his seven lectures in 1924 (Steiner, 1929). The emphasis of his lectures was
less ecological or agronomical, but focused on describing his views on the
deterioration of modern food quality. As part of a wider ‘holistic’ philosophy
called anthroposophy which covered education, art, social theory and science,
Steiner developed a spiritually based plant, animal and human nutrition theory,
where the real quality of food was not linked to compounds and their
metabolisms, but to the spiritual forces which are supposed to ‘bound’ to them.
Many agricultural practices he introduced (e.g. biodynamic preparations, the
consideration of lunar or cosmic rhythms when cultivating, sowing or
harvesting) aimed to influence these spiritual forces, which were in Steiner’s
thinking vital for all organisms (Endres and Schad, 1997). Subsequently, anthroposophic
scientists introduced the term ‘vital quality’ (Balzer-Graf and Balzer, 1991;
Bloksma et al., 2001).
The
efficacy of the specific biodynamic agronomic measures introduced by Steiner
has been studied extensively over the last 75 years, but focused mainly on
investigations into the way that lunar cycles and biodynamic preparations
affect yield, the composition and the nutritional quality of crops. The
relative efficacy of these measures is often considered to be less than that of
other agricultural measures like variety choice, the intensity of organic
fertilization, soil tillage and/or other permitted plant protection measures.
To conclude, the improvements achieved by these specific biodynamic techniques
are small, often not reproducible and therefore, from a scientific point of
view, obsolete. However disenchanting the lack of activity of these specific
measures might be, the overall management approach taken by biodynamic farming
as a whole is a surprisingly effective and efficient one. In addition,
long-term biodynamic soil management has been shown to achieve greater
improvements in soil biological activity, structural stability and inherent
fertility than more ‘mainstream’ organic management practices in the long-term
field trial DOK where bioDynamic, Organic and conventional (in German
Konventionell) plots have been compared since 1977 (Mäder et al., 2002).
Since
Steiner’s aim was to improve ‘immaterial’ qualities of foods, anthroposophic
scientists have developed analytical methods, which aim to visualize this kind
of ‘inner’ quality. This is done by preparing watery solutions of the plant,
meat or milk (= juices) which are then brought into reaction with metallic
salts like copper chloride (copper chloride crystallization method) or silver
nitrate (two different capillary picture methods). The quality of the pictures
is either interpreted by visual evaluation or by computerized image texture
analysis (Meier-Ploeger et al., 2003).
Both interpretations are reproducible and the results are often correlated with
standard food analytical quality parameters (e.g. for a case study comparing
organic and conventional apples, see Weibel et al., 2000). The main concept of
analysing the pictures created by such methods is that crops grown under optimal
biodynamic conditions should have a higher degree of ‘order’ and should be
better organized and structured. However, there are currently no sound
scientific data that validate and calibrate such methods against standard food
composition and metabolic profiling analyses and no studies that demonstrate
that consumption of food showing a greater level of ‘order’ when assessed by
‘picture forming methods’ results in improved animal or human health. Another
important concept introduced by Steiner was that of ‘holism’ or
‘integrity’ of food and farming
(Steiner, 1929). Steiner saw a farm as an organism with an inner structure and
functionality and not purely as a business with different lines of production.
He stressed greatly the common bonds between physiological processes in soils,
plants and livestock. This was one reason why organs of cattle (e.g. cow horns
or bovine peritoneum) played an important role in the production of biodynamic
preparations which aimed to improve soil fertility and plant quality. He believed
that, like an organism, a farm has to be managed as a whole unit in its full
complexity and integrity.
Steiner
was influenced by the theory of ‘emergent properties’ which was developed in
the 19th century and which is still used today to characterize very complex
systems and phenomena, in nature, physics or engineering (Fromm, 2004). An
emergent property can appear when a number of simple subsystems operate as a
collective and show more complex and often unexpected behaviours which cannot
be explained by adding up the behavior of the single subsystems. As a
consequence, biodynamic farmers are very sceptical about isolated partial
interventions (e.g. phytomedical treatments) and rely very much upon preventive
and long-term strategies of farm management.
The
concept of self regulating and healthy systems was introduced by the English
pioneer Sir Albert Howard who stated in the 1930s: ‘[E]vidence for the view
that a fertile soil means healthy crops, healthy animals, and healthy human
beings is rapidly accumulating. At least half of the millions spent every year
in trying to protect all three from disease in every form would be unnecessary
the moment our soils are restored and our population is fed on the fresh
produce of fertile land’ (Howard, 1942). Lady Eve Balfour, the founder of the
Soil Association in Great Britain later described the same concept: ‘The health
of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible’ (Balfour, 1943). To some
extent this concept of a self-regulating nature dovetailed with the idealisation
of nature by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Albert Howard’s words:
The
crops and livestock look after themselves. Nature has never found it necessary
to design the equivalent of the spraying machine and the poison spray for the
control of insect and fungus pests. There is nothing in the nature of vaccines
and serums for the protection of the livestock. It is true that all kinds of
diseases are to be found here and there among the plants and animals of the
forest, but these never assume large proportions. The principle followed is
that the plants and animals can very well protect themselves even when such
things as parasites are to be found in their midst. Nature’s rule in these
matters is to live and let live (Howard, 1943).
Source: Handbook of organic food safety and
quality
Edited by
Julia Cooper, Urs Niggli and Carlo Leifert
2007, W OODHEAD
PUBLISHING LIMITED
Cambridge, England
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