From rw17@umail.umd.eduFri Jun 21 22:07:08 1996 Date: Fri, 21 Jun 96 11:00:20 -0400 From: Raymond Weil To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Attacks on Organic Researchers Ann, Willie, Pat, and all the other brave souls, I thought I'd weigh in with my own experience with work on organic /sustainable farming over the past 25 years. This kind of dialogue may give moral support (or at least a reality check ) for those trying to buck (actually I prefer to nudge) the agricultural establishment. My first work with organic farming was for the National Sharcroppers Fund in North Carolina as a farm manager charged with developing a mixed organic livestock-grain-vegetable farm on 500 acres of abanded land in Anson County. The local farm supply dealers laughed behind my back, but happily recieved my orders for large quantities of fencing materials, greensand, rock phoshate, and cover crop seed. The main problem in those days (still desegregating rural South) was my working with Blacks, and out of town Blacks for that matter. When I later applied to about a dozen schools asking about PhD programs in integrated organic farming, I was pigeon-holed into agronomy programs because that was where my MS came from. But I was accepted and funded with various fellowships and assistantships. My dissertation looked at effects on soil ecology of disposal rates of manure, in analogy to limits on assimilation of organic wastes by aquatic systems. At my PhD dissertation defense the department head harkened back to my application statements and job experience and asked me what I thought of Organic Farming ...with a tone that suggested that my degree might be in the balance. I finessed the question, drawing on my successes in North Carolina, but not attacking conventional farming. While I was working on getting tenure in my present academic job at the Univertsity of Maryland (1979-1984), my ideas on sustainable agriculture were scoffed at by some, not funded by federal agencies (looking back on those proposals, I'm not sure I'd fund them either), but generally I was "left alone" to do my own thing. Academic freedom, I guess. The only time my teaching about organic farming was questioned was in 1983 when Dave Sammons and I instituted a special course and were not allowed to call it "Alternative Agriculture". But since 1988 I have been teaching a course that is listed in the catalogue as "Issues in Sustainable Agriculture". Little by little, I and a few others at Maryland, nudged and pushed around the edges, and looking back over the past 15 years, the University establishment that seemed so immovable has really moved. In 1980 the department's programs were pushing farmers to increase their nitrogen fertilizer rates. Now we are working to help farmers decrease them. In the 1970s the official line was to dispose of animal manures in almost any way possible (sort of injuring the crop), later in any environmentally safe way, and now in an integrated, resource-conserving way. In 1980 the local sewage plants landfilled much of their sewage sludge. Now we have programs researching co-composting sludge, chicken manure with low N municipal wastes. If the term Organic Farming won't fly with funding sources...try a different word, or a different funding source. When I worked on no-chemical relay-cropping with cover crops, I didn't call it organic grain production. It got laughed at anyway, that is untill a few farmers and even the experiment station farm crew saw some possibilities in the systems. Sure, the hard issues of structural change in agriculture are still avoided, and chemical companies still are allowed to cozy up to publically- employed researchers. I am curently working with the Consortium For Sustainable Ag. Res. and Educ. to try to influence the USDA's strategic plan. The draft plan shows just how far behind the times and conservative the USDA is compared to many state and grass-roots agriculuture organizations. But the fact that they are sponsoring "listening sessions" is a good sign. So while I see progress being made on nearly all fronts, I try to keep my head low when it doesn't really matter, search for common ground whenever possible, keep an open mind to other viewpoints (but also a thick skin), and keep on nudging. Ray R. Weil Professor of Soil Science 1103 H.J. Patterson Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 USA telephone: 301 405 1314 FAX: 301 314 9041 e-mail: rw17@umail.umd.edu