The Haber-Bosch process of fixing nitrogen produces a lot of fertilizer--but its first application was for weapons. Cut open one of the...

Biological nitrogen fixation fed the world until the end of the nineteenth century. What changed? Is it possible to feed the world’s...

When I was a student at The Ohio State University, I always wondered why Kottman Hall had so few windows. The legacies of the Cold War...

As the Korean Conflict heated up in 1950, farmers were warned about what might happen in a nuclear war. “The crippled plane with its...

On the surface, this just looks like a ranch-style house. But what's underground could destroy civilization. September 29, 2011—Rapid...

Louis Bromfield advertised his Malabar Farm produce as pesticide-free in the 1950s. Thank you to the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming...

While there's debate over who first coined the term "organic farming," J.I. Rodale was the one who popularized it. The debate over who...

This School of Living announcement from 1939 used the phrase "organic gardening" a year before Lord Northbourne. One of my favorite...

Alden and Ruth Stahr of New Jersey promoted organic farming in their 1950s newsletter, Normal Agriculture . Thank you again to NOFA-NJ...

After the devastating flood of 1902, Silver City's Big Ditch joined the list of soil erosion horror stories. “Today the Big Ditch is a...

The Dust Bowl was one of the worst ecological disasters in recorded history--and the impetus for soil conservation I actually agree with...

Providence Canyon, Georgia, was the soil erosion horror story of the 1930s. Now it's a state park. Natural erosion by wind and water...

Up through the early 1950s, practically every Indian agricultural writer promoted composting according to Howard’s Indore Method as the...

Sir Albert Howard’s Indore Method of composting eventually founded the organic farming movement in the English-speaking world. There’s...

One of the most famous experiments comparing chemical fertilizers and manure is the long-term study at the Rothamsted Experiment Station...

Most people agree that organic farming started in India. That’s where Sir Albert Howard, often referred to as the “father of organic...

One of the things that intrigues me most about the anti-organic rhetoric used by scientists is how unscientific and emotional it usually ...

A little-known fact about the rise of chemical-intensive agriculture in the United States is that it was motivated by doomsday fears....

While many people went back to the land because of an impending societal crisis, for others the crisis was personal. Such was the case...

In the twentieth century, each major wave of the back-to-the-land movement has been triggered by some kind of crisis. In 1939, that...