Farming & Gardening for Health or Disease

These three books have been published by the Soil Association in their series of organic classics, thus bringing to a new generation of readers some of the seminal contributions made to the organic movement during the 1930s and 40s. Sir Albert Howard is the most important source of organic agricultural philosophy, all of which is based on his extensive experience in India over three decades. His method came to be known as the Indore Process of composting. He was a contemporary of Sir Robert McCarrison, who did for nutrition what Howard did for agriculture. I first came across his work when researching the agriculture chapter of my book about the Prince of Wales, who contributes the foreword to Howard's book. The Prince writes that Howard was impressed by the traditional agricultural systems which worked in harmony with nature and maintained the long-term fertility of the soil. He was very clear about the chain of health leading from soil to plant to animal to human, as explained in his last work An Agricultural Testament.

Philip Conford, an expert on the history or the organic movement, contributes an extensive introduction to the book, describing Howard's life and career and charting his influence for an agricultural thinking during the 1930s. Partly due to the war and the need for a sharp increase in yields, what Howard called the 'artificial' approach triumphed, and Howard himself died in 1947, the year after the establishment of the Soil Association by Lady Eve Balfour. Interestingly, Howard condemned capitalist farming as banditry, commenting that it destroyed a vital form of capital in the form of soil and encouraged environmental degradation. I will take up this theme again in the next review below. The book begins with an extensive autobiographical introduction, and the end of which Howard states his philosophy of agriculture and health. He comments that the widespread existence of pests and diseases indicates a failure in the plant and animal links of the chain, which will lead to impaired health of human populations, as has become increasingly apparent as our food becomes more and more processed and laced with chemical additives.

The book is vast in its scope, beginning with the historical account of the part played by soil fertility in various forms of agriculture with specific reference to the UK. He then moves on to the prevalence of disease in present-day farming and gardening with sections on various staple crops as well as livestock. Interestingly, none of his own healthy animals caught foot and mouth disease, even though they lived in adjacent fields to diseased animals. The third part describes the problem of manuring and his own composting process. In his conclusion, he suggests that our civilisation needs to be refounded on a new basis, which will guarantee the health and resilience of the population. Fresh produce from the fertile soil confers both health and resistance to disease through enhanced immune function. Hence this philosophy of agriculture is also philosophy of health, corresponding to a holistic rather than reductionist approach to science.

The second book is perhaps the best-known – The Living Soil – but it owes a huge intellectual debt to Howard and McCarrison. Lady Eve Balfour was the niece of Arthur Balfour, the only Prime Minister to give the Gifford Lectures. She was a practical farmer and founder of the Soil Association in 1946. She understood and expressed the essential philosophy of both man and the implications of this approach for society. Her concept of health emphasises the importance of nutrition, and in particular of fresh unprocessed natural whole foods grown in healthy soil, which will be biologically active. She believed that natural soil fertility is maintained and enhanced by the addition of compost, an essential part of the cycle of life and death. She also adopted a holistic approach, referring to 'mutuality of action'. She was a supporter of the Peckham Project, which translated this philosophy into a viable model of community health. Tragically, the National Health Service failed to adopt positive health promotion in favour of disease management. Lady Eve conducted a long-standing experiment on her own farm at Haughley, which is described in a separate section by Lawrence Woodward. The book itself has chapters on soil ecology, science, diet and agricultural practice. It is written for the general reader, but there is a certain amount of technical material. It remains a classic statement of organic philosophy.

The third book is less well-known – indeed I had not heard about it until it arrived. The foreword here is written by the nutritionist Patrick Holford, while Philip Conford contributes an introduction to this book as well. As the title suggests, the book concerns the relationship between diet and health and contains a prophetic stance in view of today's knowing that developments. Picton is also influenced by McCarrison and Howard in formulating the key chapter of the book entitled Medical Testament. He was an early critic of processed white bread, tracing the degeneration of this staple food to the introduction of roller mills in the 1870s; indeed disintegrate eat into its component parts, enabling the bran and wheat germ to be sold off separately. As a medical doctor, Picton was convinced that many diseases were the outcome of a lifetime of poor nutrition. He reiterates Howard's philosophy of health, explaining the biological action of the mycorrhiza in the roots of plants and the benefits of breastfeeding. There are a number of chapters comparing different forms of bread, but always the bottom line remains the intimate connection between nutrition and health.

These three books provide a pretty comprehensive account of the early principles of the organic movement. The relevance of connecting the soil, food and health is becoming increasingly apparent, but one does not appreciate the full force of the argument until one has read this material firsthand, in particular the writings of Sir Albert Howard. The connections he makes make a great deal of sense, and are embedded in the cyclical workings of nature itself in contrast with the linear and mechanistic thinking characteristic of industrial agriculture with its emphasis on input packages and quantity of output. The philosophical debate between organic and agro-ecological approaches on the one hand and what is now called conventional agriculture (it didn't used to be) continues, but the focus on human health will surely become increasingly important. This may encourage people to think more deeply about the nature of health and resistance to disease.