Meaning and Origin of The Term
In 1939, Lord Northbourne coined the term organic farming in his book Look to the Land (1940), out of his conception of "the farm as organism," to describe a holistic, ecologically balanced approach to farming—in contrast to what he called chemical farming, which relied on "imported fertility" and "cannot be self-sufficient nor an organic whole." This is different from the scientific use of the term "organic," to refer to a class of molecules that contain carbon, especially those involved in the chemistry of life. This class of molecules includes everything likely to be considered edible, and include most pesticides and toxins too, therefore the term "organic" and, especially, the term "inorganic" (sometimes wrongly used as a contrast by the popular press) are both technically inaccurate and completely inappropriate when applied to farming, the production of food, and to foodstuffs themselves.
Read more about this topic: Organic Food
Famous quotes containing the words meaning, origin and/or term:
“Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, and yet recurring inevitably, without a finale in nothingness—”eternal recurrence.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)