History of Organic Farming in America
By Anneliese Abbott
Organic History
Malabar Farm
The Book
Established in 1939 by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and farmer Louis Bromfield, Malabar Farm was once considered "the most famous farm in the world." Farmers, conservationists, politicians, businessmen, and even a few Hollywood celebrities flocked to rural Ohio to see how Bromfield restored worn-out land to lush productivity using conservation practices. Permanent, sustainable agriculture, Bromfield preached, was the "New Agriculture" that would transform the postwar world.
The Farm
Today, Malabar Farm is operated by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources as an Ohio State Park. It is one of the few surviving landmarks of the New Deal soil conservation movement that is open to the public. Visitors can tour Louis Bromfield's Big House and take wagon tours of the farm's rolling fields.