I grew up on a small family orchard in Donnybrook, Western Australia in the 1960s . Subsequently I worked as a Technician in the Communication & Broadcast industries. We bought Boronia Farm  in 1988 and have worked it organically, incorporating  Permaculture principals  since the early 90s. Click on this icon   to hear my account of organic farming in an interview on ABC South West  .

As I see it, the wheel fell off of modern agriculture when  Justus von Leibig discovered that plants take up soluble nutrients. We started throwing around soluble phosphate and other nutrients and got fantastic growth and so became hooked. As Alex Podolinsky says in Bio Dynamic Agriculture Introductory Lectures Vol 1.  "It happens to be absolutely true that plants do need water soluble elements. If it were also true that artificial fertiliser were essential, as is commonly accepted, then one could justifiably ask: how did plants grow before 1845?" . In fact, plants have drinking roots and feeding roots, in a natural soil when the plant needs water it draws water via its drinking roots and uses its feeding roots to select the soluble nutrients it requires that are attached to soil colloids. When we apply soluble fertilizers the plant draws in water and takes on all the nutrients that are floating around in the water. Because the plant grows larger than before we think we are clever, but if people live on Coke and Big Macs they to grow to spectacular size but this does not mean that they are healthy, so too with plants. Plants fed on a soluble fertilizer diet are basically less healthy, and so attract pest and diseases that have evolved in nature to help weed out unhealthy specimens so that only the strongest survive. Having created unhealthy plants farmers are then locked into an expensive spraying program to protect the plants that no longer can protect themselves. 

Having said that, there are some things that are very hard to grow with the spread of diseases around the world. We used to be able to grow Nectarines successfully organically but since Brown Rot arrived in WA we are not able to grow them organically. Global Free Trade of unprocessed agricultural products is resulting in the spread of pests and diseases across the world. Is this the level playing field, ensuring that all producers have to contend with the same diseases?

In the Western World we have left the job of agricultural research to private businesses. The problem with this is that the companies doing research are only interested in developing products to sell to farmers, you can't blame them for that. This means that very little research in being done into practices that will bring about greater productivity with less inputs. From the 1960s, state Agriculture Departments allowed themselves to become the advertising arm of multinational chemical companies. The companies provided the departments with their products to do trial work which became the basis for accepted practice.

Agro-chemical companies would have us believe that we need to use their chemical and GMO products to feed the world, in fact there is a glut of food on the world market resulting in depressed prices to farmers and an obesity epidemic causing a major risk to public health. Farmers have got themselves into the mad situation of using expensive inputs to produce more in an attempt to maintain their incomes, this in turn further depresses prices. Most modern agricultural practice requires expensive inputs, a significant proportion of these inputs relate to oil use. As oil prices increase many current practices will become uneconomic. It is possible that the most "productive" farmers will be the first to go broke with significant implications for the global food supply. Another oil for food scandal in the making?Paul Roberts book, The End of Food   and  The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan both make interesting and informed reading on this subject.  As oil prices increase, organic farming will become the only economically viable option. In the last year many acres of conventional orchard  have been pushed out around Donnybrook because the prices currently paid by the supermarkets don't cover cost of production. This is very sad for the orchardists now but has significant implications for city consumers in the future. 

Organic Farming practices require more manual labour and less oil based inputs, as a result it can provide rural employment but not drain wealth from rural areas with the cost of expensive oil based inputs. The cost and legal nightmare of employing labour gives small owner operators who do all their own work, a chance to compete with corporate farmers and the opportunity to sell through Farmers Markets makes this economic model viable again..

Despite what some people believe, agriculture is still the basis of any civilisation, we are what we eat, any civilianisation that considers its food supply as just another economic activity to be produced at the lowest possible price  and sold on the basis of slick marketing, not on nutritional value and an absence of man made toxins, must be on a slippery slide. 

All other forms of culture require a sustainable agriculture system, without farmers producing food, artists, musicians, bankers, politicians and miners could not function. Farming should be considered as the most noble occupation.   It is exciting to see that Farmers Markets , Organic Farming and the Slow Food movement are part of a process of people taking back control of their food supply and economic destiny, that in recent years has been hijacked in the western world by multinational corporations. Australia always seems to follow the USA, sometimes this is good other times it is bad. Ideas around ethical and sustainable eating in America have prompted new movements and words, an Ethicurean is described as someone who seeks out tasty things that are sustainable, organic, local and/or ethical.

Barry Green, Managing Director Western Tourist Radio.

Recommended Reading
Going Organic, Your guide to a healthier life. Kris Abbey  ISBN1 74110 386 6

Australian Organic Farming Websites more good stuff here, including organic farming supplies.