Organic TitBit

[S.Annadana]

In Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease (later published as Soil and Health), Howard introduced the idea that disease, whether in plants, animals or humans, was caused by unhealthy soil and that organic farming techniques would make the soil and those living on it, healthy.12 As evidence he cited his observations that animals fed with crops grown in humus-rich soil were able to rub noses with diseased animals without becoming infected. More generally he argued that crop and animal health was a birthright and that the correct method for dealing with a pathogen was not to destroy the pathogen but rather to try to learn from it or to "make use of it for tuning up agricultural practice."12