The concept of "land-grab universities" was so polarizing in 2021 that I was unable to research the actual history of the land-grants...

Monsanto advertised Krilium as a way to make soils "friendly." But did it work? Organic matter was really big in the early 1950s. Even...

From 1948 to 1950, the fertilizer industry encouraged farmers to build organic matter - and use fertilizer. “Organic matter is the life...

First prize for the fertilizer industry-sponsored soil conservation essay contest was a 1949 Buick Super 4-Door Sedan How would you like...

Bromfield dreamed of aging cheeses in caves at Malabar--but would any of them have been suitable? One of the hardest things about writing...

Inevitable future catastrophe - or lesson of hope from the past? Environmentalism today is very pessimistic. There’s a constant sense of...

Raw peach pits and moldy peanuts contain toxic chemicals. But does that mean pesticides are safe? By the 1970s, Americans were bombarded...

One definition of "organic" is "a carbon-containing molecule." But is that the only definition? As I mentioned in my post “How Health...

In the 1970s, organic food was attacked by nutritionists as a dangerous "food fad" Throughout history, most people have wanted to be...

Finally, a book that covers the connection between the counterculture and organic farming! What’s the connection between organic farming...

The Nearings made compost using an all-plant-based version of the Indore Method. Countless members of the counterculture first saw...

Helen and Scott Nearing grew all the vegetables they ate at their Vermont and Maine homesteads--all year round. When Helen and Scott...

Helen and Scott Nearing traded labor with their neighbors to build a sugar house on their Vermont homestead and made a living selling...

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...