Britain’s organic farming pioneers: What went wrong?
Early 20th century organic farming pioneers had mostly sound notions of how to farm with nature. Why didn’t we listen to them?
The organic movement developed in the early 1900s as a response to the appearance of large-scale mechanised and chemicalised agricultural practices. One hundred years ago, and for the decades going forward, farming policies and practice favoured the large, mechanised farms that the organic farming movement protested against; today, however, organic farming is back on the rise in the UK as farmers and consumers become more aware of the negative environmental consequences of chemicalised farming. Why didn’t organic farming have the same appeal to farmers and policy makers when the movement first emerged? Could it have been because of the worldview of some of the movement’s founders?
In this talk at the Intellectual Forum, historian and environmentalist Lisbet Rausing will try to answer these questions by looking back on Britain’s organic farming pioneers in a talk that will place the organic movement and its leaders in the broader historical and political context of the post-WWI world.
About the speaker
Lisbet Rausing did her BA at the University of California Berkeley and her PhD at Harvard University, where she was also a lecturer and assistant professor in the history of science. Together with her husband, Professor Peter Baldwin (UCLA and NYU), Lisbet founded Arcadia in 2001. Arcadia protects endangered culture and nature and promotes open access.
Lisbet also supports operational family companies such as Ingleby Farms, a farming company. She is a trustee of the National Trust and the Ecological Restoration Fund. Outside boards and committees have included the Harvard Board of Overseers, Yad Hanadiv Advisory Committee and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Advisory Board.
