The Odum Brothers and a New Permanent Agriculture

The Poor Prole’s Almanac

Bleav + The Poor Prole’s Alamanac

Home & Garden, Science, Nature, Leisure, Education, How To

5 • 761 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To understand the development of the post-World War permanent agriculture movement and the movements that followed, we need to follow the trajectory of the movement of the field of ecology, and we cannot trace this evolution without talking about the Odum brothers. Eugene and Howard T. Odum were the sons of sociologist Howard Washington Odum & Anna Louise Kranz and would go on to change the trajectory of agroecology, for better or worse. In 1954, both were hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to study a coral reef at the Eniwetok Atoll atomic test bomb site.3 Just the year before, Eugene had published the first edition of Fundamentals of Ecology, the first textbook focused on the concept of the ‘ecosystem’. As they had refined their beliefs on ecology and systems thinking (while Eugene had been the primary author in the book, Howard T had contributed chapters to it), their time working at this test bomb site provided the foundation for both brothers and their belief around ecosystem energy. The coral reefs were described by the brothers as a steady-state system; it was their assessment that the coral reef system used most of the energy it consumed through photosynthesis to regulate the system. It would be the example that the brothers would point to of what a mature ecosystem looked like— self-regulating, self-maintaining, and a steady-state system. Both brothers would go on to study different ecosystems and each provided new data that the condition of stability was characteristic of all mature ecosystems. To read about The Odum Brothers' contributions to history, check out the following substack for sources and further details: https://poorprolesalmanac.substack.com/p/the-odum-brothers To support this podcast, join our patreon for early episode access at https://www.patreon.com/poorprolesalmanac For PPA Writing Content, visit: www.agroecologies.org For PPA Restoration Content, visit: www.restorationagroecology.com For PPA Merch, visit: www.poorproles.com For PPA Native Plants, visit: www.nativenurseries.org To hear Tomorrow, Today, our sister podcast, visit: www.tomorrowtodaypodcast.org/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back. It's so good to be back with you guys. It's, uh, it's been a minute.
0:19.7	Well, it's been a week to be exact. I know, but we,
0:23.5	we haven't had guests on in so long that it feels like it's like been an extended break. I feel like
0:28.1	maybe we've spent some time apart to grow closer together. I don't think that's it either
0:33.5	because we are, we record every week, so it doesn't really impact us like that but i guess we are
0:39.0	getting closer to the end of this season so that's fun yeah we are i think we only got like
0:44.7	three three episodes together left after this and then we're we're done you don't have to look at my
0:49.6	face anymore yes um vacation so today we're gonna, like, move the needle forward a little bit.
0:56.3	We've spent a lot of time talking about the early 20th century at this point, right?
1:00.3	And, like, all these different pieces that built into, like, the slingshot of the permanent
1:05.1	agriculture movement, mostly from the early 19th, 20th century to, like, the mid-20th century
1:10.2	to about World War II, right?
1:12.3	And then we saw, like, the government, like, invest in agriculture for, like, how we know agriculture today, right?
1:19.2	Now, in the last episodes that we did together, we talked a bit about, like, Russell Lord, trying to, like, bridge these, like, interest areas of ecology and agriculture and permanent
1:29.8	agriculture movement or the permanent agriculture movement. Try to keep it from like falling into
1:34.6	like this pseudoscience or like kind of cultish space that wasn't really engaged with the rest
1:40.7	of like agriculture. So now is the time we're going to start getting into stuff most people are familiar with.
1:47.1	And by most people, I mean like the 24 of our listeners, you know what we're talking about
1:52.2	at any given time.
1:54.0	Yeah, those people, all of you guys.
1:56.1	Two dozen.
1:56.9	Two dozen.
	...

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