History of the organic movement
What is organic?
Why is there a need for organic certification?
How to tell genuine organic products?
‘Conventional farming is all about killing things.
Organic farming is about promoting life.’ Rob Bauer
History of the organic movement
The organic movement is more of a renaissance than a revolution.
Until the 1920s, all agriculture was generally organic. Farmers used natural means to feed the soil and to control pests. Food reached our table in much the same form as it left the farm. We ate seasonal, organic produce grown locally or harvested from the land and sea, transported a short distance, then purchased and consumed within days. Often, we grew our own vegetables or knew the people who grew them.
Today we eat food sourced from all over the world, often as a product of questionable farming practices. Food is generally picked unripe, sprayed or waxed to preserve it, kept in cold storage, transported long distances, gassed into ripeness and then sold on supermarket shelves, weeks or months after it was first picked.
Farmed seafood and animals in most cases are fed on unnatural pelletised diets fortified with hormones and antibiotics and bred in an inhumane, crowded and unnatural environment.
It wasn’t until the Second World War that farming methods changed dramatically. It was when research on chemicals designed as nerve gas showed they were also capable of killing insects. In 1939, Paul Muller developed DDT, the first of a new class of insecticides – chlorinated hydrocarbons to counter the pest problems.
Since then, a new way of farming emerged, where the use of chemicals was heavily promoted. This led to the outright dismissal of organic farming methods.
The modern organic movement began at the same time as industrialised agriculture. It began in Europe around the 1920s, when a group of farmers and consumers sought alternatives to the industrialisation of agriculture. The first organic organisation was set up in 1929, based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner (1861), an Austrian scholar who was concerned that the use of chemicals undermined the fertility of Germany’s land.
Steiner’s theory of biodynamic farming is an enhanced method of organic farming which creates rich, living soil essential to the health and vitality of life on a farm. It is a holistic approach that includes application of organic standards, use of special formulations and natural preparations for pest control, compost and manure treatments, companion planting, astrological timing, lunar cycles and considers the spiritual interactions between people, plants and the universe.
The Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association is based in Europe with offices in many countries including UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Bio-dynamic farmers and growers use the symbol ‘Demeter’ which is an internationally respected accreditation.
In Britain, the organic movement had gathered pace in the 1940s. Lady Eve Balfour wrote The Living Soil, a book on organics, inspired by the work of Sir Albert Howard and Sir Robert McCarrison. In 1946, she joined with several others to set up Soil Association in the UK, which became the largest organic certifier in the UK.
Sir Albert Howard, a colonial British living in India, reinvented the compost pile, developed hundreds of strains of wheat and developed a soil drainage and irrigation system that allowed wheat to be grown without the use of fungicides. He discovered that crops grown in soils with a high organic content were more disease and insect resistant than the same crops grown with chemical fertilisers. Sir Robert McCarrison, a director of nutritional research in India, had discovered a relationship between diet and health.
In 1962, science writer Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book where she criticised the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides, fertilisers and weedkillers. The book title refers to the ultimate disappearance of songbirds because of the effects of DDT. In the book, she exposed the toxic effects of pesticides through a process whereby synthetic chemicals used in agriculture magnify through the food chain.
The ‘be natural’ approach of the 1960s and 1970s, the growing consumer interest in health and nutrition, the growth of the green movement, the focus on conservation and environmental issues stimulated the development of the organic market and encouraged farmers to adopt organic methods. In the middle of the 20th century enthusiasts brought organic techniques from Europe to Australia.
The organic movement has sprung directly from the customers’ demand as they become sick of the health hazards associated with use of chemicals in food and household products. With growing consumer interest in how and where food is produced, organic food has become more popular.
Products offered only through health food stores in the 1970s and 1980s spread to the corners of supermarkets in the 1990s. Today, organic products occupy prime shelf space in the big chain supermarkets.
What is organic?
In 1995, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) in the USA defined organic as follows: ‘Organic is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony’.
Organic foods and products are characterised by the following features:
1) Sustainably farmed
Organic farmers have a total focus on soil health. It uses sustainable agricultural principles that build up the soil fertility with composts and green manures, and prevent top soil degradation and erosion. This is important since it has been estimated that it takes 500 years to form 2.5 cm of fertile topsoil naturally.
Keeping the soil in good condition and preventing its erosion is vital in achieving a natural balance with the environment in which a farm exists and is as self-sustaining as possible.
2) Free of chemicals
Organic produce is grown without the use of synthetic chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilisers, and with consideration to the health of the soils, animals and ecosystems that are involved in its creation.
In organic farming, diseases, weeds and pests are proactively and preventively managed through cultural methods such as good soil health for natural plant resistance, selection for physically stronger plants and resistant crop varieties, crop rotation with appropriate sowing times, companion panting, the maintenance of habitats for natural predators and beneficial insects as well as composting for disease control.
Physical means such as crop covers, grease bands around tree trunks, slashing, manual, flame or steam weeding and hand plucking beetles off plants are also used in addition to the cultural methods. Organic farmers can use natural oils or plant derived, biodegradable pesticides as a second line of defence. These are strictly monitored and used under tight restriction.
Organic products are processed without the use of artificial colourings, preservatives, flavourings, fillers, hydrogenated or trans-fats, enhancers, stabilisers, sweeteners and all other additives.
3) Not irradiated
Organic food is not subjected to irradiation, a process in which food is exposed to high-energy ionising radiation to kill insects, pests and moulds, reduce levels of bacteria and delay rotting and ripening so that food can be kept longer.
4) Not genetically modified
Organic food does not have artificial human intervention as genetic modification is not allowed in the production and processing of organic food and food products.
Genetic modification (GM) is different from selective breeding as it involves taking genes from a completely different species and inserting them into the DNA of a plant or animal. It is uncertain whether artificial insertion of genes could destabilise an organism and encourage mutations. The long term effects of GM for our health and our planet’s biodiversity are unknown.
5) No antibiotics and growth hormones in live stocks
Organic live stocks are allowed to mature naturally without the use of growth promoting agents. Organic dairy cows are not given growth hormone to increase their milk production.
Antibiotics are not routinely used to prevent diseases. Use of homeopathic and natural treatment is preferred when treating illnesses.
6) Humane treatment of livestock
Organic livestock are treated humanely, given access to fields, clean water, daylight and adequate ventilation, allowed plenty of space to express their natural behaviour, given comfortable bedding and good shelter from prevailing winds. They eat their natural diet and supplemented by organic, not genetically modified grain. There are fewer animals stocked on every acre of field to prevent overgrazing.
Organic poultry can wander outdoors instead of spending their lives in a cage or packed in a shed. The practice of de-beaking where the beaks of all birds are seared off with a hot blade to prevent them from attacking each other in a confined cage is banned as it causes immense pain to the birds.
Organic poultry are not fed food that contains any animal wastes or growth enhancing agents or anything containing GM ingredients. They are raised differently from battery hens, thus organic eggs are far less likely to contain salmonella. The cramped, unhygienic conditions in which battery hens are raised form a breeding ground for diseases such as salmonella.
Why is there a need for organic certification?
Organic certification ensures that all stages of production and processing are subject to inspection and meet the predetermined Organic Standards. It protects producers of genuine organic produce against misrepresentation of conventional produce as organic.
Organic certification is your guarantee that what you are eating and consuming has been grown or produced using rigorous organic standards. This certification protects consumers against deception in the marketplace.
How to tell genuine organic products?
There is a very strict set of guidelines that governs any product that bears the label ‘certified organic’. Organic standards cover every aspect of registration, certification, food production, allowable inputs for soil management, pest and disease control, animal health, conversion, natural resource management, permitted and non-permitted ingredients, processing, packaging and distribution.
Organic standards are enforced by certification bodies around the world. Certification by a recognised organic body is a lengthy process, involving careful assessment to ensure that all of the strict criteria are satisfied. It takes time (two to three years depending on the country) to convert to a fully certified organic farm.
In Australia, biodynamic farming is regulated under the same standard as organic. Australia has had a national organic standard since 1992. The Australian Organic Standards have enabled the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) to accredit organic and biodynamic certification organisations, on the basis of their ability to certify their growers as meeting the national standard. This co-regulatory system was set up to ensure buyers of organic products could be confident that certified produce was grown and processed according to organic or biodynamic principles.
Certifiers conduct annual audits and unannounced spot checks on organic producers and operators to ensure they comply with the strict Organic Standard. All operators must maintain an Organic Management Plan and report annually. All product sold by a certified operator must have a clearly documented traceable trail.
AQIS in turn performs an annual audit of the certifier’s inspection system at various organic farms, processors, wholesalers and exporters. Organic foods are certified at the farm or during the processing and manufacturing stage for processed foods.
Producers must be capable of satisfying the requirements of the standard for at least one year before products can be labelled as ‘organic in-conversion’. Producers must then continue to meet the specified requirements for a further two years before being permitted to use the term ‘certified organic’.
Landless systems are farms where an agricultural product is not grown in the soil. Aquaculture and mushroom farms do not go through the three year conversion process as there is no soil involved and no potential chemical residues to be removed. However, they are still subject to the certification system and must have two audits throughout an entire production cycle before they can achieve organic certification.
Processors, wholesalers and retailers do not have to go through the same three-year conversion period that farmers do as there is no land to convert. However, they are still subject to the strict certification system to ensure they comply with the Australian Organic Standards.
Certified organic products contain (excluding water and salt) at least 95% organically produced agricultural ingredients. The remaining ingredients (up to 5%) can be non-agricultural substances or non-organically produced agricultural ingredients with strict criteria such as absolutely no synthetic chemicals or genetic modifications.
Where organic ingredients comprise between 70% and 90% of a processed product, this can be labelled ‘contains certified organic ingredients’.
Single ingredient products or any products labelled as ‘100% organic’ must be 100% organically derived with the exception of any water or salt contained in the products.
Currently, there are seven AQIS-approved organic certifiers in Australia.
National Certified Regulatory Mark (Voluntary)
Following the agreement of certifying organisations, AQIS has recently developed an ‘Australian Government Certified’ regulatory mark. The mark does not replace the logos of certifying organisations but will help provide greater assurance for consumers wishing to purchase certified organic and biodynamic produce. While the mark is voluntary, its use is governed by formal conditions enforced by AQIS.
Organic Growers of Australia (OGA) is a program for small producers to become certified organic. It is for domestic market only and farmers can market their produce in local shops, farmers’ markets, box scheme home deliveries or from their farm gates.
‘Many organic practices simply make sense, regardless of what overall agricultural system is used. Far from being a quaint throwback to an earlier time, organic agriculture is proving to be a serious contender in modern farming and a more environmentally sustainable system over the long term.’
David Suzuki