Your Grandchildren Need You

Eco News

Nature and Environment

Eco News

"The birthright of all living things is health. This law is true for soil, plant, animal and man: the health of these four is one connected chain. Any weakness or defect in the health of any earlier link in the chain is carried on to the next and succeeding links, until it reaches the last, namely, man.

The widespread vegetable and animal pests and diseases, which are such a bane to modern agriculture, are evidence of a great failure of health in the second (plant) and third (animal) links of the chain. The impaired health of human populations (the fourth link) in modern civilised countries is a consequence of this failure in the second and third links.

This general failure in the last three links is to be attributed to failure in the first link, the soil; the undernourishment of the soil is at the root of all.

The failure to maintain a healthy agriculture has largely cancelled out all advantages we have gained from improvements in hygiene, in housing, and medical discoveries.

To retrace our steps is not really difficult once we set our minds to the problem. If we are willing to conform to natural law, we shall rapidly reap the reward not only in a flourishing agriculture, but in the immense asset of an abounding health in ourselves and in our children's children."

Sir Albert Howard (1945)

Sir Albert Howard was the founder of the organic farming movement. He worked for 25 years as an agricultural investigator in India, first as Agricultural Adviser to States in Central India and Rajputana, then as Director of the Institute of Plant Industry at Indore, where he developed the famed Indore composting process, which put the ancient art of composting on a firm scientific basis.

The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture (Culture of the Land)
by Sir Albert Howard