Fight the future! How the contemporary campaigns of the UK organic movement have arisen from their composting of the past

This paper explores the discourse of the British organic movement and the elements of continuity that stem from the early part of the twentieth century. Using political discourse analysis the paper tracks the emergence of the discourse of organic farming from a shared concern about the soil in the 1930s. These elements are combined in a formal structure in the late 1940s, with the Soil Association being formed. The new Soil Association resolved its internal tensions by agreeing on a programme of scientific research that was ultimately unsuccessful. This stagnation was ended in the early 1970s with the mutation of the discourse, which emphasized the moral superiority of organic farming. The paper contends that many of the current positions and projects of Soil Association can be traced to recurrences within the discourse.