As organic food increases in popularity, there has been increased interest in the history of organic farming. Previous scholarship has done excellent work documenting the social and political aspects of organic and sustainable agriculture, but less research has been done on the history of organic farming methods. The purpose of this study was to address this deficiency by surveying the organic and sustainable farming community in the midwestern and northeastern United States to identify influential authors, publications and organizations. Information about influences on farming practices was created using an anonymous online survey, distributed through organic and sustainable agriculture organizations in the target region. Out of the 224 respondents who completed the survey, 171 (76%) listed books, 169 (75%) listed organizations and 123 (55%) listed influential individuals. A total of 218 authors were identified, with Eliot Coleman receiving the most mentions, followed by Rodale publications, Wendell Berry, Acres U.S.A. magazine, Masanobu Fukuoka, Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan. 242 organizations were listed, with Marbleseed (MOSES), MOFGA, NOFA, PASA, OEFFA, LSP, SFA-MN and MOFFA most frequently mentioned. These results provide a useful starting point for future research on the development and dissemination of farming methods in this region. Research priorities include conducting oral histories with still-living authors of influential books and archiving organizational records before critical historical information is lost.

Organic farming activists have promoted the idea that ancient peasant wisdom informed the basic principles or Albert Howard’s Indore method, and of organic farming generally. The myth of the peasant origins of organic farming has influenced environmental activists and historians alike and concealed the remarkable contributions of Albert Howard and his first and second wives, Gabrielle and Louise Howard. A few statements made by Howard himself, and by his second wife, Louise, inspired the myth of peasant origins of organic wisdom. But a closer look at the published and unpublished writings of the Howards show that the formulation of the Indore method, which lies at the heart of organic farming, is a strict scientific protocol with its roots in the scientific work of Albert Howard and his cohorts.

The vast majority of crop hectares in the United States are treated with chemical herbicides annually. The adoption of herbicides for weed control was rapid in the 1950s and 1960s. Herbicides replaced the use of millions of workers to pull and hoe weeds by hand and greatly reduced the use of tillage for weed control. Costs of production were reduced and crop yields increased because herbicides were cheaper and more effective than hand weeding and cultivation. Organic crop growers cite weed control as their greatest difficulty in crop production because they are not permitted the use of chemical herbicides. They substitute hand weeding and cultivation for herbicides at a greatly increased cost and with reduced effectiveness. Aggregate studies that estimate the value of herbicides assume that growers would substitute a certain amount of hand weeding and tillage if chemicals were not used, which would not be sufficient to prevent yield losses totaling about 20% of U.S. crop production.