Decades of Modification: The History of Organic Farming

Years of Modification: The History of Organic Farming

Fifteen years earlier, you could have had a hard time finding a natural tomato in your local supermarket. Due to recent farming
advances and public awareness, however, customers can find a host of natural items in grocery store shelves and in the
produce section of grocery shops throughout America. Exactly how did we come to the point we’re at today and when did buying produce
ended up being so complex.

In truth, it’s the kind of farming in which farmers use fabricated pesticides, herbicides and other standard farming
techniques that is truly historically new to us. Prior to 1940, much of the produce grown and consumed in American houses was
entirely natural and was frequently selected no further than one’s own backyard.

Using chemical additives and even farm executes we see today slowly discovered its way into farming in the very first half
of the Twentieth Century. In 1950, there were 3 million tractors in the United States, up from 600 tractors in 1910. At about
the same time, advocates of natural farming methods started to exercise their trade, starting in Central Europe and India
around 1920.

Organic farming approaches started to reach consumer awareness, beginning in the 1950s and, in the following 20 years, there
was an increasing concern about the environmental effects of farming methods using chemical pesticides and herbicides.
This was when food-purchasing cooperatives and specialized organic food manufacturers concerned the leading edge amongst some consumers.

In the 1970s and 1980s, regulators acknowledged a growing need for some way to offer organic accreditation to those farmers
who followed particular growing guidelines and who used authorized growing techniques. It wasn’t, however, up until the 1990s that the
formal or governmental certification of organic foods appeared in the United States and in several countries throughout the
world.

In the last two years, the availability of natural foods on the marketplace grew considerably and, at one point, the surge of
development of the organic food market exceeded twenty percent each year. In fact, the sales of natural baby food enhanced by
almost twenty-two percent in 2006 alone.

In the last 5 to seven years, multinational food companies have leapt on the organic food bandwagon and have increased
their research and development of foods that might be accredited organic. This has actually led to an increase in the accessibility
of processed natural foods and in the lowering of the expense of these sorts of items.

In today’s time, organic foods remain to be more expensive than their conventional counterparts, in part due to the fact
that organic farmers have to satisfy stricter quality guidelines. This is a labor extensive procedure that increases the costs of
the item.

To meet consumer demand, grocery stores strictly dedicated to providing organic foods, such as the entire Foods Market and
Waitrose (in the UK), have actually gone into business and are offering quality natural foods to consumers. In order to offer
natural foods to a bigger population, Wal-Mart revealed its strategies to increase the accessibility of organic foods to its
customers and at a lower cost than the supermarkets.

It appears that, almost as quickly as the big farmers started putting artificial pesticides and herbicides on their crops, a.
backlash developed and a group of devoted farmers and consumers worked– and remain to work– towards enhancing the.
accessibility and quality of natural foods for those food customers who can not grow an organic produce garden in their.
own backyard.