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The War on Bugs

By Will Allen

Summarized with permission of Chelsea Green.
All rights reserved.

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The First Farm Revitalization Movement in America

After the turn of the nineteenth century, criticism of America's aristocracy and its farming practices became much more widespread, and even some of the aristocratic farmers became early critics of large-scale agriculture. While the first American agricultural reformers drew largely on the agricultural writings of the aristocrat John Taylor, agricultural reform actually had its roots in practices employed by ancient European farmers, including:

Spreading animal manure and other fertilizers on the soil to revitalize it and produce a better crop
Replenishing essential nutrients and the soil conditions for optimum plant growth by planting a variety of plants, which acted as fertilizer for future crops

In spite of the revitalization movement, soil loss and degenerating farmland continued to be an issue in the early 1800s, as large-scale farms owned by aristocrats still mainly relied on methods that exploited rather than revitalized resources.

Early Farm Journals

Due to the demand for magazines that directly served the farm community, a number of farm journals had their start in the early 1800s, including American Farmer, the most influential of the early magazines. In the beginning, these journals contained limited advertising. However, they soon began to increase the amount of advertising, in spite of complaints from farmers.

Many large-scale farmers ignored the advice offered by these journals, as they felt they had an unlimited supply of land at their disposal and therefore had no need to worry about replenishing the soil they farmed. Often, when they had used up the fertility of one area of land, they simply moved on to another tract. This sometimes involved taking over land from small farmers, who did not have the resources to protect their land from being taken over by these large-scale farmers and by the encroaching development of canals and railroads. As a result, soil fertility in general continued to decline and pasture land became overgrazed.

The "Guano Craze"

Guano, or bird manure, had been used as a fertilizer by the Peruvians for thousands of years. In the middle of the nineteenth century, mining and shipping companies entered the agricultural market by importing it as a miracle fertilizer for large-scale use in America. Urban journals joined the hype by including propaganda supporting its use as a miracle cure for worn-out soil in their articles and advertisements. Farmers, however, remained skeptical, even after the rural farm journals had eventually succumbed to the pressure of the large-scale commercial interests behind the promotion of guano.

To combat this skepticism, the large companies employed the following tactics to sell their product:

Promoteed a belief in the naturalness of guano.
Established a belief the effectiveness of guano.
Questioned the value of manure and composts from local sources.

Eventually, 20 years of propaganda, coupled with the effectiveness of Peruvian guano as a commercial fertilizer broke down farmers' pessimistic attitudes toward advertisements and farm journals, and toward commercially-sold fertilizer.

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The War on Bugs

The First Farm Revitalization Movement in America

Early Farm Journals

The "Guano Craze"

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