A Review of ‘Organic Struggle: The Movement for Sustainable Agriculture in the United States’

Abstract

Organic Struggle chronicles the challenges encountered by innovators in a growing segment of the U.S. food pro- duction and marketing system. Practiced for millenia by farmers before the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and first developed more formally in Europe, organic farming practices began to gain prominence in the U.S. only in the 1950s. Far more than a system for pro- ducing food, this strategy has become a focus for those supporting healthy and pesticide-free products, for some who embrace the organic system as a food movement, and by many who disagree with the current domination of the country’s food industry by large farms and a small num- ber of multinational corporations. Within the organic sector there is debate between those who favor a system primar- ily run by local farmers who sell through small markets and CSAs, and others who insist that the ‘Big-Organic’ seg- ment that now sells more than half of all organic food is doing more to help the environment in the large picture. Author Brian Obach describes this ongoing struggle.