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History of Organic Farming in America
By Anneliese Abbott
Organic History
Blog


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...

Anneliese Abbott
Sep 26, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Sep 19, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Sep 12, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Sep 5, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Aug 29, 20242 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Aug 22, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Aug 15, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Aug 8, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Aug 1, 20243 min read
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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...

Anneliese Abbott
Jul 25, 20243 min read
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Spiritual Narratives: Pope Pius XI's Catholic Critique of Materialism
All of the historical narratives that I’ve discussed so far have one thing in common—they are secular. They focus almost exclusively on...

Anneliese Abbott
Jul 18, 20243 min read
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When Facts Don't Fit: Limitations of Critical Race Theory
I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2020 to 2022—during some of the most tumultuous years politically in...

Anneliese Abbott
Jul 11, 20243 min read
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The Newest Narrative: Critical Race Theory and Agricultural History
There’s one more major narrative about agricultural history that I haven’t mentioned yet—not because it isn’t important, but because it’s...

Anneliese Abbott
Jul 4, 20243 min read
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Sir Albert Howard's Version of Agricultural History
Organic farming has always questioned the progressive narrative of history. It has to. After all, if the progressive narrative is true,...

Anneliese Abbott
Jun 27, 20243 min read
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Why the Anti-Organic Historical Narrative Is Progressive
History is storytelling, and there are different types of narratives that can be used to frame a historical event. Last week, I...

Anneliese Abbott
Jun 20, 20242 min read
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Storytelling and History: Why Narratives Matter
One of the most important things I learned in graduate school was that history is storytelling—and that there are different ways to tell...

Anneliese Abbott
Jun 13, 20243 min read
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What Really Happened? How the Pandemic Changed My View of History
When I first started writing about the past, I had lofty ideals. My goal was simple—to find the truth and tell it. I often wished that it...

Anneliese Abbott
Jun 6, 20243 min read
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Perils of Fame: How Grape Nuts Turned Euell Gibbons into a Joke
Do a Google search for Euell Gibbons today, and you’re not likely to turn up much about his environmental activism or connection to...

Anneliese Abbott
May 30, 20243 min read
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Long Hair, Love, and Organic Farming: Euell Gibbons and the Counterculture
One stereotype of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s was that young people didn’t listen to—or trust—anyone over thirty. That may...

Anneliese Abbott
May 23, 20243 min read
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Jefferson's Dream: New Book About Homesteading History
An agrarian society, where most people live on the land and grow their own food. An emphasis on urban farming, composting, and...

Anneliese Abbott
May 16, 20242 min read
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