Organic, Local, and Plant-Based Eating

The organic farming movement has roots reaching back to the early twentieth century, when figures such as the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who introduced biodynamic agriculture in a series of lectures in 1924, and the British botanist Sir Albert Howard argued against the growing use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in industrial agriculture. In the United States, this philosophy remained a marginal countercultural practice for decades before gaining formal legal recognition through the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, which directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish national standards. The USDA National Organic Program, which created the familiar "USDA Organic" certification seal, took effect in 2002, giving consumers a legally defined, third-party-verified standard for the first time.