Organic Farming Essay

“ Know your farmer, know your food” goes the slogan by organic farmers to promote the consumption of locally grown food through organic farming. Subsequent to the clear distinction between organic and conventional food, there is an increase in focus towards organic farming. The “silent spring” that represents the seemingly solitary voice of the science writer Rachel Carson, 1962 ushered in the organic farming movement to counter the green revolution industrial-scale use of pesticides and fertilizers back in the 1960s. However the use of the term “organic farming” started with Lord Northbourne (aka Walter James, 4th Baron Northbourne) (Pogash, 2008), which he derived from the concept of “the farm as organism” as, explained in his book titled

After almost a century of neglect, organic farming is now finding place in the mainstream of development and shows great promise commercially, socially and environmentally. While there is continuum of thought from earlier days to the present, the modern organic movement is radically different from its original form. It now has environmental sustainability and productivity at its core, in addition to the founders concerns for healthy soil, healthy food and healthy people. Based on the technique of organic farming, it utilizes organic wastes such as the remains of plants, animals as well as farm wastes and aquatic wastes; including other biological materials, mostly produced insitu along with beneficial microbes (biofertilizers) to release nutrients to crops, which connotes the ‘organic’ nature of organic farming. For clarity purposes, Organic Farming (OF) is different from Certified Organic Farming (COF). While OF employs the understanding and knowledge of naturally occurring process through the relationship with the environment, COF includes the checks and balances to maintain soil fertility and the control of insect, pest and diseases based on commercial quality control and marketing mechanism (NHM, 2015). Within the philosophy of organic farming, all aspects of farming system are interlinked with each other and rely on each other through organic management. This is obvious from the web relationship explained thus: A healthy biologically active soil is the source of crop nutrition, on-farm biodiversity controls pests, crop rotation and multiple cropping maintains the system’s health and on-farm resource management with integration of animal husbandry ensure