The 41st NOFA Summer Conference last month at the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst provided an exciting combination of
cutting edge and practical information so useful for organic growers and eaters
as well as opportunities to visit with old and new NOFA friends, just as it has
for four decades.
It also provided an opportunity to reflect on
the history of the organic movement and how the holistic organic approach with
deep roots in traditional cultures has the ability to solve current environmental
and social problems. (For more on the value of this approach, I highly
recommend Bill McKibben's recent essay "The Pope and the Planet" in the New York Review of Books.)
Over 1,100 people of all ages attended this
year's conference which was dedicated to Juanita Nelson, a peace and civil
rights activist, war tax refuser, subsistence farmer, the impetus behind
Greenfield, Massachusetts' Free Harvest Supper and Winter Fare and a longtime
NOFA member.
The theme, "Healing the Climate, Healing
Ourselves: Regeneration through Microbiology" referred to the two keynote
presentations. On Friday night, Dr. Natasha
Campbell-McBride talked about the numerous roles the microorganisms in our
intestines (the human microbiome) play in our physical and mental health in a
presentation titled "Overcoming Psychiatric Problems by Healing the
Digestive System." On Saturday night, Ronnie Cummins talked about the role
of the soil microbiome in soil, plant and planetary health in "Reversing
Global Warming and Rural Poverty through Regenerative Organics." These two presentations were a near perfect
expression of the holistic nature of organic agriculture as expressed in the
quote at the beginning of this piece which is variously attributed to Sir
Albert Howard and to Lady Eve Balfour.
Howard went to India nearly a century ago to
teach farmers there good British agricultural methods. Instead he a discovered a better way to farm
based on composting, crop rotation and human labor. His An Agricultural Testament was
published in 1940 and was very influential in the early organic farming
movement.
Organic farming pioneer, Lady Eve Balfour,
began farming in Britain in 1920. In
1943, she published The Living Soil based on the first three years of
her pioneering side-by-side comparison of
organic and chemical farming. A few years later she founded the Soil Association, still Britain's organic
farming organization.
Before the Saturday night keynote, NOFA/Mass
premiered its video on restoring carbon to the soil with the help of plants and
a vibrant soil ecosystem. The
organization also distributed its white paper, "Soil Carbon Restoration:
Can Biology do the Job?" written by Jack Kittredge. Both of these valuable
resources are available here. The short
version is that much of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is altering
the climate originally came from the soil as a result of tillage, agricultural
chemical use, long periods of bare soil between cash crops as well as from
deforestation. One of the most powerful and viable ways to take carbon out of
the atmosphere is to restore it to the soil by using growing methods which keep
the soil covered with a variety of plants as much a possible and tilling as
little as possible. Another important
tool in this work is careful, rotational grazing by animals to encourage deep
rooted, diverse pastures and vigorous soil life. These strategies can also help
restore water to soil and aquifers and increase plant health and resistance to
diseases.
Of the more than 100 workshops offered, I
attended five, all of which provided valuable information for use on our
farm. Farmer Daniel Botkin's workshop
"Build and Manage Low-tech, Low-cost Low-tunnels" demonstrated many
ways to expand the use of low tunnels including as nurseries for a variety of
crops, to grow crops that are not quite hardy here and to extend the harvest
season at both ends. He keeps any soil that isn't covered by plants mulched
with hay. He doesn't ever till his soil. (This reminded me of Connecticut
gardener Ruth Stout who was famous for using mulch instead of tillage in her
garden.) Julie Rawson, who presented the workshop "Raising High Quality
Vegetables while Building Carbon" does some tillage, but always adds
compost or cover crops at the same time. Julie uses many different cover crops
and creates specialized composts for different plants. The workshop "Improving Soil Health with
Cover Crops" was presented by Thomas Akin, the Massachusetts State
Resource Conservationist with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS). He encouraged vegetable farmers to use a diverse mixture of cover crops
whenever possible to fix nitrogen, scavenge nutrients and feed a wide variety
of soil organisms. In the past few
years, the NRCS has become very active in promoting practices which increase
and maintain soil health.
UMass Extension Associate Susan Scheufele's
very informative workshop on "Integrated Pest Management in
Brassicas" (using organic strategies) provided examples of the effects the
changing climate is having on our growing practices. New pests have moved into this region as
temperatures warm and the growing season lengthens. Fortunately, for managing
most of these insects and diseases, there are low-tech organic methods, such as
using straw mulch, perimeter trap crops and good scouting. It was wonderful to
hear this UMass extension educator talk so knowledgeably and respectfully about
organic methods. It hasn't been and and still isn't always so. (You can view
Susan's Powerpoint slides here. Be forewarned
that it includes information about chemical controls which she skipped
at NOFA.)
I finished up the conference with Dan
Rosenberg's excellent "Advanced
Vegetable Fermentation" workshop to learn more about this low energy and
healthful way to preserve the bounty of the harvest for winter eating. The
founder of Real Pickles, Dan was able to address questions from folks who were
fermenting a wide variety of vegetables at home and on a commercial scale.
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| Receiving the first "Bill Duesing Lifetime Achievement Award" |
This year's conference also provided me with
three opportunities to reflect on the growth of the organic movement in this
region, on the deep roots of organic practice and my involvement with NOFA. I
presented a workshop on "Organic History, Theory and Practice" and
was interviewed as part of the oral history project at the W.E.B. Dubois
Library at UMass which is collecting NOFA archives as part of its social change in New England collection. Then on
Saturday night, I was awarded the first "Bill Duesing Lifetime Achievement Award" by the NOFA Interstate Council.
How it all began . . .
It was just a little notice in Organic
Gardening magazine early in 1972 that got me connected to NOFA, then only a
few months old and based in Vermont. The notice advertised a meeting of organic
farmers that winter. (I believe it was in a Grange hall basement.) For three
years before that I had lived on an old farm and grown food as part of the
Pulsa artists' commune at Harmony Ranch in Oxford, CT. Several members had parents who were organic
gardeners so Organic Gardening magazines were always lying around the
farmhouse.
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| My first garden at Harmony Ranch as seen in the article, "The Public Sensoriums of Pulsa: Cybernetic Abstraction and the Biopolitics of Urban Survival" in the fall 2008 issue of Art Journal. |
I'd also read and been inspired by F. H. King's
Farmers of Forty Centuries, Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and
Japan, published in 1911, in which the USDA soil scientist describes how
farmers in China, Japan and Korea had managed to feed a large population from a
small land base for 4,000 years without destroying the fertility of the soil. He understood how linear, industrial
agriculture decreased soil health and fertility in this country. King describes
many practices that are now standard on good organic farms: multiple cropping
and intercropping, intelligent rotations, cover crops, growing food almost
everywhere and recycling all organic matter.
I was also inspired by Louis Bromfield's description in Pleasant
Valley (published in 1945) of the way he returned dust bowl ruined farms to
fertility and made springs that had been dry for years flow again by using
organic methods, sustainable forestry, compost and careful grazing.
The owners of Harmony Ranch wanted to sell it
for industrial purposes. Some of us wanted to have a piece of land where we
could plant trees and see them mature. I wanted to continue the organic growing
which had excited me for several years.
Earlier that winter, we had found a beautiful
piece of land on the other side of Oxford, part of what had been Joe and
Josephine Solar's farm. I was ready to learn more about organic growing and
homesteading, so the NOFA meeting sounded very good.
After that first meeting I was hooked on NOFA.
I found many kindred spirits - well
educated back-to-the-landers who were interested in growing healthy food for
their families and communities. People
who couldn't imagine spraying poisons on their food, or even handling toxic
pesticides. At that time the agricultural establishment was resistant to new
farmers who wanted to grow organically.
It just didn't work they said. So we decided that we needed to share
information among ourselves and NOFA has been facilitating that for nearly 45
years through its conferences, workshops, advocacy and outreach programs. It is
amazing to see how consumers, farmers and even some in the ag establishment now
understand the importance and effectiveness of organic farming methods.
Within a few years, NOFA consisted of chapters
in Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as a growing number of members in other
states in the Northeast. At some point in the late 1970s, I volunteered to be
on the NOFA Interstate Council as one of two representatives of members who
weren't in Vermont or New Hampshire.
Beginning in 1975, the Council created the
Summer Conference. Wendell Berry was the
keynote speaker at the first conference held at High Mowing School in New
Hampshire. Although I missed the Friday night keynote, I remember especially
NOFA Founding President Samuel Kaymen's workshop on soil fertility the next day
and the workshops on Biodynamic Agriculture which were featured on Sunday.
Until the mid 1980s, the Conference alternated between Vermont and New
Hampshire.
The Council also published the organization's
newspaper, The Natural Farmer and was ready to accept new state chapters
as membership in other states grew.
During the 1980s, chapters were formed in Massachusetts, Connecticut,
New York and New Jersey. The Rhode
Island Chapter was formed in 1990. I was the founding president of the
Connecticut chapter in 1982 and served as a board member until I started
working for CT NOFA in 2001 when the organization hired its first coordinator
before expanding my title to Executive Director. I retired from this position
in 2013, but still serve as the Organic Advocate.
The Interstate Council provided a way for state
chapters to work together on important issues. Organic certification, for
example, which most of the states had initiated in the 1980s and the formation
of the National Organic Program in the 1990s were a strong focus. The Council
also spread the expertise of Northeast growers through farmer-to-farmer
meetings, a multiyear project to encourage CSAs, The Real Dirt
(published in 1993 to share the strategies of successful organic farmers) and
the NOFA Organic Practices Handbook series.
Over the years the Council was a founding
member of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)
and of the Agricultural Justice Project. The Interstate's policy work has grown
significantly in the past decade.
Once the Connecticut NOFA chapter was formed, I
represented it on the Council until 2014.
It was my privilege to be president of the Interstate Council for
several three-year terms in the 1990s and 2000s. The work of the Council in
tying together the NOFA members is critically important.
I was honored to be able to play a part in the
leadership of this pioneering organization for nearly four decades, humbled by
my Lifetime Achievement Award and am excited by the next two generations of
organic farmers, gardeners and activists who attended this year's conference.
Bill ~ Your passion, dedication and good humor are an inspiration to many.
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