Book Review: Jones, Rebecca (2010) Green Harvest: A History of Organic Farming and Gardening in Australia. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

Summary in the original language of the document

Green Harvest is an introduction to four Australian organic farmers and gardeners. Each example is framed within the context of an historical account which is itself subsumed within Jones’ own “four key principles” of organics. At the outset, the author alerts us to her view that “History is both fact and fiction” (p.ix). It is a novel approach which will not appeal to all, and will be unsettling for some. The author states that: “Environmental history is the lens through which I have examined organic growers’ changing ideas about
health and environment” (p.ix). The author claims that: “I have identified four key principles, each founded on organic farmers’ and gardeners’ belief in the dependence of health on the biophysical environment. These four principles are: soil, chemical-free growing, ecological wellbeing and back to the land” (p.xiv). In this five chapter book, these four “principles” provide the headings for the first four chapters, and each of these chapters carries a “case study”, each of which is based on one or several interviews