Cooking Up a Story

Posts By: Mark Keating

The Waste Land: Organic Agriculture during the Bush Years

Part 7: My previous post outlined the improbable circumstances under which the organic community found itself the belle of the ball at the tail end of the Clinton Administration. The combination of vibrant market growth and a national constituency learning how to make its voice heard commanded the attention of the powers that be in [...]

U.S. Adopts National Organic Standards: Victory for All, but…

[Editor's Note: This is part six of Mark Keating's ongoing history of the origins and evolution of organic agriculture; how the organic community and the USDA eventually came together to create the national organic standards; their subsequent implementation; and the fallout felt through to the present day.] “Democracy is the worst form of government you [...]

The Organic Community, the USDA, and the Morning After

Part 5: Our previous look at the history behind organic agriculture delved into the grassroots community’s courtship of federal recognition and the consummation of that relationship with the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) in 1990. Today’s discussion will pick up in the light of the morning after and the reservations – felt to this day [...]

Genesis of the USDA’s National Organic Program

How the Federal Government came to regulate the organic industry Part 4: My previous column on the history of organic agriculture wrapped up with a look at the burgeoning national market that emerged during the 1980’s. Counterculture back-to-the-landers and die-hard traditionalist farmers were raising crops and livestock without agro-chemicals and growing numbers of consumers were [...]

The Organic Certification Process

Early Beginnings Part 3: I’ve devoted the first two installments in this series to exploring the dual wellsprings that gave rise to organic agriculture. Organic Agriculture: Its Origins and Evolution delved into Sir Albert Howard’s pioneering vision of organic agriculture as a self-regulating system of integrated crop and livestock production that provides optimal nutrition for [...]

Industrial Agriculture and the Organic Alternative: Rachel Carson’s Contribution

Part 2: My introductory post on organic farming (Organic Agriculture: Its Origins, and Evolution Over Time) highlighted Sir Albert Howard’s role in describing its fundamental practices and principles. Seeing Nature as the most efficient and enduring of all farmers, Howard portrayed organic agriculture as a holistic endeavor inseparable from a farm’s environmental conditions. In Howard’s [...]

Organic Agriculture: Its Origins, and Evolution Over Time

Part 1: What comes to mind when you see food labeled “organic” at the grocery store or farmers market? I asked one audience that question years ago, and a gentleman replied emphatically, “Nuts!” Being in North Carolina at the time, I asked if he meant pecans and walnuts, but he assured me that it was [...]