Anneliese Abbott
Cows, Horns, and Biodynamic Dairy Farming
It’s 6:30 a.m., the sun is shining, and it’s milking time in the Camphill Village Kimberton Hills dairy barn. I walk over from Sherry’s...
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History of Organic Farming in America
By Anneliese Abbott
Organic History
Blog
Anneliese Abbott
Nov 283 min read
Off to Pennsylvania: Tales from My Organic Research Trip
What better time than Thanksgiving Day to look back with gratitude on all the amazing experiences I’ve had this year? I know, it might...
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Anneliese Abbott
Nov 212 min read
Blame the Americans: Why India Turned Away from Organic Farming
Up through the early 1950s, practically every Indian agricultural writer promoted composting according to Howard’s Indore Method as the...
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Anneliese Abbott
Nov 143 min read
Gandhi and Organic Farming: A Little-Known Connection
Sir Albert Howard’s Indore Method of composting eventually founded the organic farming movement in the English-speaking world. There’s...
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Anneliese Abbott
Nov 72 min read
Compost or Chemicals? Fertilizer Experiments in Colonial India
One of the most famous experiments comparing chemical fertilizers and manure is the long-term study at the Rothamsted Experiment Station...
23 views2 comments
Anneliese Abbott
Oct 313 min read
The British in India: Colonial Origins of Organic Farming
Most people agree that organic farming started in India. That’s where Sir Albert Howard, often referred to as the “father of organic...
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Anneliese Abbott
Oct 243 min read
The Desolate Year: Defending Pesticides with Horror Stories
One of the things that intrigues me most about the anti-organic rhetoric used by scientists is how unscientific and emotional it usually ...
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Anneliese Abbott
Oct 173 min read
Insect Apocalypse: Promoting Pesticides with Doomsday Fears
A little-known fact about the rise of chemical-intensive agriculture in the United States is that it was motivated by doomsday fears....
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Anneliese Abbott
Oct 103 min read
Rejected by Society: Why Helen and Scott Nearing Went Back to the Land
While many people went back to the land because of an impending societal crisis, for others the crisis was personal. Such was the case...
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Anneliese Abbott
Oct 33 min read
Island of Security: Why Louis Bromfield Went Back to the Land
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...
25 views2 comments
Anneliese Abbott
Sep 263 min read
Preparing for the Apocalypse: Doomsday Fears and Homesteading
I find connections to organic farming in the most unexpected places. This time, it was in a random book I just picked up from the library...
30 views1 comment
Anneliese Abbott
Sep 193 min read
An Inconvenient History: The Racist Roots of Progress
After completing my master’s degree at UW-Madison and moving home, I spent over a year trying to understand why highlighting a connection...
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Anneliese Abbott
Sep 123 min read
Forbidden Perspectives: How Breaking Academic Consensus Cost Me a PhD
There’s a big difference between graduate and undergraduate college classes. In most undergraduate classes, you sit and listen to a...
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Anneliese Abbott
Sep 53 min read
Is the Scientific Consensus on Evolution Free or Forced?
To fund my second year in graduate school at UW-Madison, I applied for several different teaching assistantships. One was to teach...
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Anneliese Abbott
Aug 292 min read
Are Christianity and Environmentalism Incompatible? Refuting Lynn White, Jr.
I am a Bible-believing creationist Christian. I am also an environmentalist and an organic farmer. I see no conflict between the two. But...
26 views0 comments
Anneliese Abbott
Aug 223 min read
Fighting Racism with Love: Koinonia Farm in the 1950s
“On Monday night, July 26, Koinonia Farm’s roadside market was dynamited. About 10:15 p.m. a car evidently came into the driveway, tossed...
24 views0 comments
Anneliese Abbott
Aug 153 min read
Women and the Land: Organic Gardening at Grailville in the 1940s
Along with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference and Catholic Worker, there was a third organization involved in the Catholic...
15 views1 comment
Anneliese Abbott
Aug 83 min read
Activist Homesteaders: Catholic Worker Communes in the 1930s
An urban organization of activists devoted to social justice and racial equity decided to form a commune and go back to the land. This...
10 views1 comment
Anneliese Abbott
Aug 13 min read
Back to the Land and Back to Christ: Catholic Homesteading in the 1930s
Homesteading was huge in the 1930s. With a shortage of jobs in urban areas and a lack of market for large-scale farmers, many New Deal...
18 views1 comment
Anneliese Abbott
Jul 253 min read
Organic Society: Catholic Agrarianism and Biodynamics in the 1930s
Progressivism had failed in the 1930s. Despite technological innovations, all of the social problems of humanity were just as bad as they...
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