History of Organic Farming in America
By Anneliese Abbott
Organic History
Lecture Videos and Speaking Schedule
I love to speak just as much as I love to write, and I can give lectures on any topic that I cover on this website. For 2025, I prepared two new lectures for organic farming conferences. Now that the winter conference season is over, I've linked this page to recordings of myself giving these lectures. If you'd like to have me give one of these lectures or create a new one for your conference, please contact me and I can add it to my schedule!
Soil and Health: The Philosophies That Shaped Organic Farming
Join Anneliese Abbott for a historical journey to the roots of organic farming philosophy in the 1930s and 1940s. From the British health movement to Sir Albert Howard’s composting methods to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer’s concept of the farm as an organic whole, Anneliese will cover the origins of the organic philosophy, explain how it both overlapped with and was fundamentally different from traditional agriculture, and discuss whether organic farming is "scientific."
​
Past Presentations: NOFA-NJ Winter Conference: Living Roots, Resilience, and Food Security, Saturday, January 25, 2025
Can Organic Feed the World? Science, the Cold War, and Organic Farming
​
Earl Butz famously proclaimed that 50 million people would starve if all American farmers used organic methods. But where did that idea come from? Join Anneliese Abbott for an eye-opening look at how Cold War geopolitics created the “feeding the world” rhetoric in the 1950s; why agronomists felt like they had to attack organic farming and environmentalism to save the world; and how this Cold War history continues to influence discussions about "organic," "sustainable," and "regenerative."
​
Past Presentations: NOFA-NJ Winter Conference: Living Roots, Resilience, and Food Security​, Saturday, January 25, 2025
​​
OEFFA Conference 2025: Boldly Grow​, Friday, February 14, 2025