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Eliot Coleman holds a singular place in the history of organic agriculture.
Widely regarded as the most influential and iconic organic farmer in America, he has authored a series of seminal books that reshaped how food is grown across the world. A lifelong scholar of the soil, Eliot Coleman has also built the largest private collection of organic farming literature in existence — more than 3,000 volumes that chronicle the movement’s evolution.
His newest book, The Self-Fed Farm and Garden: A Return to the Roots of the Organic Method, to be released November 4th by Chelsea Green Publishing, has not only drawn sweeping praise from fellow pioneers, but it speaks powerfully to those who care deeply about organic principles, even if they are not growers themselves.
At a moment when organic has become a multi-billion-dollar industry grappling with profound questions of integrity and authenticity, Eliot’s message could not be more timely.
Why did you write this book?
The book brings together ideas that have stayed with me for decades.
When we started farming, we had no money and cleared land from a spruce forest to grow our food. To build fertility, we couldn’t afford purchased inputs like soybean meal or dried blood. Instead, we relied on what the land gave us — waste hay from nearby farms, cover crops, crop rotations and green manures (crops such as clover, vetch and rye that are turned back into the soil while still green to improve soil fertility and structure).
Over time, we realized that everything we needed to sustain fertility was already on our own farm.
That’s a different mindset than what’s common today, where organic farmers heavily rely on external inputs. Why does it matter?
For several reasons.
First, all these external inputs drive up the cost of producing organic food. With hunger on the rise and people complaining about prices, we need to find ways to lower costs and make organic more affordable.
Second, relying on off-farm materials introduces serious quality risks. Farmers can’t always know whether compost or soil amendments are contaminated. In Maine, we’ve seen PFAS pollution devastate organic farms — contamination that many believe came from tainted compost or sludge.
Finally, there’s a mistaken belief that OMRI, which reviews and approves farm inputs, has always been part of organic. It has not.
The USDA’s National Organic Program does not oversee OMRI, yet the organization has enormous influence over what’s allowed on organic farms. That should greatly concern people.
Some may say that your idea of a self-fed farm only works on a small scale. Is that true?
Not at all. Green manures are scale-neutral.
With the right equipment, large farms can plant and manage green manures efficiently and at a much lower cost than buying inputs.
What’s the main takeaway you want readers to have?
Organic farming is drifting away from its original principles, and dependence on external inputs threatens both quality and purity.
Everything needed for a productive, profitable farm — no matter the size — already exists on-farm. Yet, what’s required is the will to return to those practices.
And if organic brands truly want to lower costs and strengthen integrity, they should be urging their farmers to embrace organic farming’s original principles. It is one way to help their margins that they are probably not thinking about.
Eliot Coleman is a living legend and an unquestioned thought leader in our industry, and his newest book should be read by everyone who cares about organic. It can be ordered HERE.
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With gratitude, 
Max Goldberg, Founder |
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