Ammonium nitrate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate 

 

Ammonium nitrate

Names
IUPAC name Ammonium nitrate
Identifiers
CAS Number	6484-52-2
3D model (JSmol)	Interactive image
ChEBI	CHEBI:63038
ChEMBL	ChEMBL1500032
ChemSpider	21511
ECHA InfoCard	100.026.680
EC Number	229-347-8
PubChem CID	22985
RTECS number	BR9050000
UNII	T8YA51M7Y6
UN number	0222 – with > 0.2% combustible substances 1942 – with ≤ 0.2% combustible substances 2067 – fertilizers 2426 – liquid
CompTox Dashboard (EPA)	DTXSID2029668
InChI[show]
SMILES[show]
Properties
Chemical formula	NH4NO3
Molar mass	80.043 g/mol
Appearance	colorless
Density	1.725 g/cm3 (20 °C)
Melting point	169.6 °C (337.3 °F; 442.8 K)
Boiling point	approx. 210 °C (410 °F; 483 K) decomposes
Solubility in water	Endothermic 118 g/100 ml (0 °C) 150 g/100 ml (20 °C) 297 g/100 ml (40 °C) 410 g/100 ml (60 °C) 576 g/100 ml (80 °C) 1024 g/100 ml (100 °C)[1]
Magnetic susceptibility (χ)	-33.6·10−6 cm3/mol
Structure
Crystal structure	trigonal
Explosive data
Shock sensitivity	very low
Friction sensitivity	very low
Detonation velocity	2500 m/s
Hazards
Main hazards	Explosive, Oxidizer
GHS pictograms
GHS Signal word	Danger
GHS hazard statements	H201, H271, H319
GHS precautionary statements	P220, P221, P271, P280, P264, P372
NFPA 704 (fire diamond)	0 1 3 OX
Lethal dose or concentration (LD, LC):
LD50 (median dose)	2085–5300 mg/kg (oral in rats, mice)
Related compounds
Other anions	Ammonium nitrite
Other cations	Sodium nitrate Potassium nitrate Hydroxylammonium nitrate
Related compounds	Ammonium perchlorate
Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa).

Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula NH₄NO₃. It is a white crystalline solid consisting of ions of ammonium and nitrate. It is highly soluble in water and hygroscopic as a solid, although it does not form hydrates. It is predominantly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer. Global production was estimated at 21.6 million tonnes in 2017.

Its other major use is as a component of explosive mixtures used in mining, quarrying, and civil construction. It is the major constituent of ANFO, a popular industrial explosive which accounts for 80% of explosives used in North America; similar formulations have been used in improvised explosive devices.

Many countries are phasing out its use in consumer applications due to concerns over its potential for misuse. Accidental ammonium nitrate explosions have killed thousands of people since the early 20th century.

Occurrence

Ammonium nitrate is found as the natural mineral gwihabaite – the ammonium analogue of saltpetre – in the driest regions of the Atacama Desert in Chile, often as a crust on the ground or in conjunction with other nitrate, iodate, and halide minerals. Ammonium nitrate was mined there in the past, but virtually 100% of the chemical now used is synthetic.

Production, reactions and crystalline phases

The industrial production of ammonium nitrate entails the acid-base reaction of ammonia with nitric acid:

HNO₃ + NH₃ → NH₄NO₃

Ammonia is used in its anhydrous form (a gas) and the nitric acid is concentrated. The reaction is violent owing to its highly exothermic nature. After the solution is formed, typically at about 83% concentration, the excess water is evaporated off to leave an ammonium nitrate (AN) content of 95% to 99.9% concentration (AN melt), depending on grade. The AN melt is then made into "prills" or small beads in a spray tower, or into granules by spraying and tumbling in a rotating drum. The prills or granules may be further dried, cooled, and then coated to prevent caking. These prills or granules are the typical AN products in commerce.

The ammonia required for this process is obtained by the Haber process from nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia produced by the Haber process can be oxidized to nitric acid by the Ostwald process. Another production method is a variant of the nitrophosphate process:

Ca(NO₃)₂ + 2 NH₃ + CO₂ + H₂O → 2 NH₄NO₃ + CaCO₃

The products, calcium carbonate and ammonium nitrate, may be separately purified or sold combined as calcium ammonium nitrate. 

Ammonium nitrate can also be made via metathesis reactions:

(NH₄)₂SO₄ + Ba(NO₃)₂ → 2 NH₄NO₃ + BaSO₄

NH₄Cl + AgNO₃ → NH₄NO₃ + AgCl

Reactions

As ammonium nitrate is a salt, both the cation, NH₄⁺, and the anion, NO₃⁻, may take part in chemical reactions. 

Solid ammonium nitrate decomposes on heating. At temperatures below around 300 °C, the decomposition mainly produces nitrous oxide and water:

NH₄NO₃ → N₂O + 2H₂O

At higher temperatures, the following reaction predominates.

2NH₄NO₃ → 2N₂ + O₂ + 4H₂O

Both decomposition reactions are exothermic and their products are gas. Under certain conditions, this can lead to a runaway reaction, with the decomposition process becoming explosive. See § disasters for details. Many ammonium nitrate disasters, with loss of lives, have occurred.

The red–orange colour in an explosion cloud is due to nitrogen dioxide, a secondary reaction product.

Crystalline phases

A number of crystalline phases of ammonium nitrate have been observed. The following occur under atmospheric pressure.

Phase	Temperature (°C)	Symmetry
(liquid)	(above 169.6)
I	169.6 to 125.2	cubic
II	125.2 to 84.2	tetragonal
III	84.2 to 32.3	α-rhombic
IV	32.3 to −16.8	β-rhombic
V	below −16.8	tetragonal

Both the β-rhombic to α-rhombic forms are potentially present at ambient temperature in many parts of the world but have a 3.6% difference in density. As a result, this phase transition and attending change of volume, with the practical consequence that ammonium nitrate formed as solid rocket motor propellant develops cracks. For this reason, phase stabilized ammonium nitrate (PSAN) which incorporates metal halides as stabilisers has been investigated.

Applications

Fertilizer

Ammonium nitrate is an important fertilizer with NPK rating 34-0-0 (34% nitrogen). It is less concentrated than urea (46-0-0), giving ammonium nitrate a slight transportation disadvantage. Ammonium nitrate's advantage over urea is that it is more stable and does not rapidly lose nitrogen to the atmosphere.

Explosives

Ammonium nitrate is an ingredient in certain explosives. Examples of explosives containing ammonium nitrate include:

• Astrolite (ammonium nitrate and hydrazine rocket fuel)
• Amatol (ammonium nitrate and TNT)
• Ammonal (ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder)
• Amatex (ammonium nitrate, TNT and RDX)
• ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil)
• DBX (ammonium nitrate, RDX, TNT and aluminum powder)
• Tovex (ammonium nitrate and methylammonium nitrate)
• Minol (explosive) (ammonium nitrate, TNT and aluminum powder)
• Goma-2 (ammonium nitrate, nitroglycol, Nitrocellulose, Dibutyl phthalate and fuel)

Mixture with fuel oil

ANFO is a mixture of 94% ammonium nitrate ("AN") and 6% fuel oil ("FO") widely used as a bulk industrial explosive. It is used in coal mining, quarrying, metal mining, and civil construction in undemanding applications where the advantages of ANFO's low cost and ease of use matter more than the benefits offered by conventional industrial explosives, such as water resistance, oxygen balance, high detonation velocity, and performance in small diameters.

Terrorism

Ammonium nitrate-based explosives were used in the Sterling Hall bombing in Madison, Wisconsin, 1970, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the 2011 Delhi bombings, the 2011 bombing in Oslo, and the 2013 Hyderabad blasts. 

In November 2009, the government of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan imposed a ban on ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, and calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizers in the former Malakand Division – comprising the Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Swat, Chitral, and Malakand districts of the NWFP – following reports that those chemicals were used by militants to make explosives. Due to these bans, "Potassium chlorate – the stuff that makes safety matches catch fire – has surpassed fertilizer as the explosive of choice for insurgents."

Niche uses

Ammonium nitrate is used in some instant cold packs, as its dissolution in water is highly endothermic. It also was used, in combination with independently explosive "fuels" such as guanidine nitrate, as a cheaper (but less stable) alternative to 5-aminotetrazole in the inflators of airbags manufactured by Takata Corporation, which were recalled as unsafe after killing 14 people.

A solution of ammonium nitrate with nitric acid called Cavea-b showed promise for use in spacecraft as a more energetic alternative to the common monopropellant hydrazine. A number of trials were carried out in the 1960s but the substance was not adopted by NASA.

Safety, handling, and storage

Numerous safety guidelines are available for storing and handling ammonium nitrate. Health and safety data are shown on the safety data sheets available from suppliers and from various governments.

Pure ammonium nitrate does not burn, but as a strong oxidizer, it supports and accelerates the combustion of organic (and some inorganic) material. It should not be stored near combustible substances. 

While ammonium nitrate is stable at ambient temperature and pressure under many conditions, it may detonate from a strong initiation charge. It should not be stored near high explosives or blasting agents. 

Molten ammonium nitrate is very sensitive to shock and detonation, particularly if it becomes contaminated with incompatible materials such as combustibles, flammable liquids, acids, chlorates, chlorides, sulfur, metals, charcoal and sawdust.

Contact with certain substances such as chlorates, mineral acids and metal sulfides, can lead to vigorous or even violent decomposition capable of igniting nearby combustible material or detonating.

Ammonium nitrate begins decomposition after melting, releasing NO
x , HNO₃, NH
₃ and H₂O. It should not be heated in a confined space. The resulting heat and pressure from decomposition increases the sensitivity to detonation and increases the speed of decomposition. Detonation may occur at 80 atmospheres. Contamination can reduce this to 20 atmospheres.

Ammonium nitrate has a critical relative humidity of 59.4%, above which it will absorb moisture from the atmosphere. Therefore, it is important to store ammonium nitrate in a tightly sealed container. Otherwise, it can coalesce into a large, solid mass. Ammonium nitrate can absorb enough moisture to liquefy. Blending ammonium nitrate with certain other fertilizers can lower the critical relative humidity.

The potential for use of the material as an explosive has prompted regulatory measures. For example, in Australia, the Dangerous Goods Regulations came into effect in August 2005 to enforce licensing in dealing with such substances. Licenses are granted only to applicants (industry) with appropriate security measures in place to prevent any misuse. Additional uses such as education and research purposes may also be considered, but individual use will not. Employees of those with licenses to deal with the substance are still required to be supervised by authorized personnel and are required to pass a security and national police check before a license may be granted.

Health hazards

Health and safety data are shown on the material safety data sheets, which are available from suppliers and can be found on the internet.

Ammonium nitrate is not hazardous to health and is usually used in fertilizer products.

Ammonium nitrate has an LD₅₀ of 2217 mg/kg, which for comparison is about two-thirds that of table salt.

Disasters

Ammonium nitrate decomposes, non-explosively, into the gases nitrous oxide and water vapor when heated. However, it can be induced to decompose explosively by detonation. Large stockpiles of the material can also be a major fire risk due to their supporting oxidation, a situation which can easily escalate to detonation. Explosions are not uncommon: relatively minor incidents occur most years, and several large and devastating explosions have also occurred. Examples include the Oppau explosion of 1921 (one of the largest artificial non-nuclear explosions), the Texas City disaster of 1947, the 2015 Tianjin explosions in China, and the 2020 Beirut explosion.  Ammonium nitrate can explode through two mechanisms:

• Shock-to-detonation transition. An explosive charge within or in contact with a mass of ammonium nitrate causes the ammonium nitrate to detonate. Examples of such disasters are Kriewald, Morgan (present-day Sayreville, New Jersey), Oppau, and Tessenderlo.
• Deflagration to detonation transition. The ammonium nitrate explosion results from a fire that spreads into the ammonium nitrate (Texas City, TX; Brest; West, TX; Tianjin; Beirut), or from ammonium nitrate mixing with a combustible material during the fire (Repauno, Cherokee, Nadadores). The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion.

History of organic farming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_organic_farming 

 

Traditional farming (of many particular kinds in different eras and places) was the original type of agriculture, and has been practiced for thousands of years. All traditional farming is now considered to be "organic farming" although at the time there were no known inorganic methods. For example, forest gardening, a fully organic food production system which dates from prehistoric times, is thought to be the world's oldest and most resilient agroecosystem.  After the industrial revolution had introduced inorganic methods, most of which were not well developed and had serious side effects. An organic movement began in the 1940s as a reaction to agriculture's growing reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The history of this modern revival of organic farming dates back to the first half of the 20th century at a time when there was a growing reliance on these new synthetic, non-organic methods.

Pre-World War II

The first 40 years of the 20th century saw simultaneous advances in biochemistry and engineering that rapidly and profoundly changed farming. The introduction of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine ushered in the era of the tractor and made possible hundreds of mechanized farm implements. Research in plant breeding led to the commercialization of hybrid seed. And a new manufacturing process made nitrogen fertilizer — first synthesized in the mid-19th century — affordably abundant. These factors changed the labour equation: there were almost no tractors in the US around 1910, but over 3,000,000 by 1950; in 1900, it took one farmer to feed 2.5 people, but currently the ratio is 1 to well over 100. Fields grew bigger and cropping more specialized to make more efficient use of machinery. The reduced need for manual labour and animal labour that machinery, herbicides, and fertilizers made possible created an era in which the mechanization of agriculture evolved rapidly. 

Consciously organic agriculture (as opposed to traditional agricultural methods from before the inorganic options existed, which always employed only organic means) began more or less simultaneously in Central Europe and India. The British botanist Sir Albert Howard is often referred to as the father of modern organic agriculture, because he was the first to apply modern scientific knowledge and methods to traditional agriculture. From 1905 to 1924, he and his wife Gabrielle, herself a plant physiologist, worked as agricultural advisers in Pusa, Bengal, where they documented traditional Indian farming practices and came to regard them as superior to their conventional agriculture science. Their research and further development of these methods is recorded in his writings, notably, his 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, which influenced many scientists and farmers of the day. 

In Germany, Rudolf Steiner's development, biodynamic agriculture, was probably the first comprehensive system of what we now call organic farming. This began with a lecture series Steiner presented at a farm in Koberwitz (Kobierzyce now in Poland) in 1924. Steiner emphasized the farmer's role in guiding and balancing the interaction of the animals, plants and soil. Healthy animals depended upon healthy plants (for their food), healthy plants upon healthy soil, healthy soil upon healthy animals (for the manure). His system was based on his philosophy of anthroposophy rather than a good understanding of science. To develop his system of farming, Steiner established an international research group called the Agricultural Experimental Circle of Anthroposophical Farmers and Gardeners of the General Anthroposophical Society.

In 1909, American agronomist F.H. King toured China, Korea, and Japan, studying traditional fertilization, tillage, and general farming practices. He published his findings in Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911, Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-43609-8). King foresaw a "world movement for the introduction of new and improved methods" of agriculture and in later years his book became an important organic reference. 

The term "organic farming" was coined by Walter James (Lord Northbourne), a student of Biodynamic Agriculture, in his book Look to the Land (written in 1939, published 1940). In this text, James described a holistic, ecologically balanced approach to farming, "the farm as organism," basing this on Steiner's agricultural principles and methods. One year previously to his book's publication, James had hosted the first Biodynamic Agriculture conference in England, the Betteshanger Summer School and Conference, at which Ehrenfried Pfeiffer was the key presenter.

In 1939 James, Albert Howard, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and George Stapleton joined at Farleigh to implement an experiment comparing Biodynamic, organic and chemical fertilization methods. "The Farleigh Experiment", had been planned since initial meetings in 1936 including ten participants. The experiment was cut short due to the fact that Biodynamic compost was not available until after the Betteshanger Summer School event, the disruption of the impending war, and lack of funding. Though inconclusive, this experiment was seen as providing impetus for the similar "Haughley Experiment" described below. 

In 1939 Lady Eve Balfour, who had been farming since 1920 in Haughley Green, Suffolk, England, launched the Haughley Experiment. Lady Balfour believed that mankind's health and future depended on how the soil was used, and that non-intensive farming could produce more wholesome food. The experiment was run to generate data to test these beliefs. Four years later, she published The Living Soil, based on the initial findings of the Haughley Experiment. Widely read, it led to the formation of a key international organic advocacy group, the Soil Association.

In Japan, Masanobu Fukuoka, a microbiologist working in soil science and plant pathology, began to doubt the modern agricultural movement. In 1937, he quit his job as a research scientist, returned to his family's farm in 1938, and devoted the next 60 years to developing a radical no-till organic method for growing grain and many other crops, now known as natural farming (自然農法, shizen nōhō), nature farming, 'do–nothing' farming or Fukuoka farming.

Post-World War II

Technological advances during World War II accelerated post-war innovation in all aspects of agriculture, resulting in large advances in mechanization (including large-scale irrigation), fertilization, and pesticides. In particular, two chemicals that had been produced in quantity for warfare, were repurposed for peacetime agricultural uses. Ammonium nitrate, used in munitions, became an abundantly cheap source of nitrogen. And a range of new pesticides appeared: DDT, which had been used to control disease-carrying insects around troops, became a general insecticide, launching the era of widespread pesticide use.

At the same time, increasingly powerful and sophisticated farm machinery allowed a single farmer to work larger areas of land and fields grew bigger.

In 1944, an international campaign called the Green Revolution was launched in Mexico with private funding from the US. It encouraged the development of hybrid plants, chemical controls, large-scale irrigation, and heavy mechanization in agriculture around the world.

During the 1950s, sustainable agriculture was a topic of scientific interest, but research tended to concentrate on developing the new chemical approaches. One of the reasons for this, which informed and guided the ongoing Green Revolution, was the widespread belief that high global population growth, which was demonstrably occurring, would soon create worldwide food shortages unless humankind could rescue itself through ever higher agricultural technology. At the same time, however, the adverse effects of "modern" farming continued to kindle a small but growing organic movement. For example, in the US, J.I. Rodale began to popularize the term and methods of organic growing, particularly to consumers through promotion of organic gardening. 

In 1962, Rachel Carson, a prominent scientist and naturalist, published Silent Spring, chronicling the effects of DDT and other pesticides on the environment. A bestseller in many countries, including the US, and widely read around the world, Silent Spring is widely considered as being a key factor in the US government's 1972 banning of DDT. The book and its author are often credited with launching the worldwide environmental movement.

In the 1970s, global movements concerned with pollution and the environment increased their focus on organic farming. As the distinction between organic and conventional food became clearer, one goal of the organic movement was to encourage consumption of locally grown food, which was promoted through slogans like "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food".

In 1972, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) was founded in Versailles, France and dedicated to the diffusion and exchange of information on the principles and practices of organic agriculture of all schools and across national and linguistic boundaries.

In 1975, Fukuoka released his book, The One-Straw Revolution, with a strong impact in certain areas of the agricultural world. His approach to small-scale grain production emphasized a meticulous balance of the local farming ecosystem, and a minimum of human interference and labour.

In the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s, J.I. Rodale and his Rodale Press (now Rodale, Inc.) led the way in getting Americans to think about the side effects of nonorganic methods, and the advantages of organic ones. The press's books offered how-to information and advice to Americans interested in trying organic gardening and farming.

In 1984, Oregon Tilth established an early organic certification service in the United States.

In the 1980s, around the world, farming and consumer groups began seriously pressuring for government regulation of organic production. This led to legislation and certification standards being enacted through the 1990s and to date. In the United States, the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 tasked the USDA with developing national standards for organic products, and the final rule establishing the National Organic Program was first published in the Federal Register in 2000.

In Havana, Cuba, the loss of Soviet economic support following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a focus on local agricultural production and the development of a unique state-supported urban organic agriculture program called organopónicos. 

Since the early 1990s, the retail market for organic farming in developed economies has been growing by about 20% annually due to increasing consumer demand. Concern for the quality and safety of food, and the potential for environmental damage from conventional agriculture, are apparently responsible for this trend.

Twenty-first century

Throughout this history, the focus of agricultural research and the majority of publicized scientific findings has been on chemical, not organic, farming. This emphasis has continued to biotechnologies like genetic engineering. One recent survey of the UK's leading government funding agency for bioscience research and training indicated 26 GM crop projects, and only one related to organic agriculture. This imbalance is largely driven by agribusiness in general, which, through research funding and government lobbying, continues to have a predominating effect on agriculture-related science and policy. 

Agribusiness is also changing the rules of the organic market. The rise of organic farming was driven by small, independent producers and by consumers. In recent years, explosive organic market growth has encouraged the participation of agribusiness interests. As the volume and variety of "organic" products increases, the viability of the small-scale organic farm is at risk, and the meaning of organic farming as an agricultural method is ever more easily confused with the related but separate areas of organic food and organic certification. 

As efforts to protect our environment increase, so does the popularity of sustainable produce. Agricultural chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers can contaminate our environment though run-off into watercourses. In the US, Certified organic standards from the EPA do not allow for the use of toxic chemicals or artificial fertilizers in organic farming.

Agrarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarianism 

 

Agrarianism is a social philosophy or political philosophy which relates to the ownership and use of land for farming, or relating to the part of a society or economy that is tied to agriculture. Agrarianism and agrarians will typically advocate on behalf of farmers and those in rural communities. While there are many schools of thought within agrarianism, historically a reoccurring feature of agrarians has been a commitment to egalitarianism, with agrarian political parties normally supporting the rights of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy in society.

Philosophy

Some scholars suggest that agrarianism values rural society as superior to urban society and the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values. It stresses the superiority of a simpler rural life as opposed to the complexity of city life. For example, M. Thomas Inge defines agrarianism by the following basic tenets:

• Farming is the sole occupation that offers total independence and self-sufficiency.
• Urban life, capitalism, and technology destroy independence and dignity and foster vice and weakness.
• The agricultural community, with its fellowship of labor and co-operation, is the model society.
• The farmer has a solid, stable position in the world order. They have "a sense of identity, a sense of historical and religious tradition, a feeling of belonging to a concrete family, place, and region, which are psychologically and culturally beneficial." The harmony of their life checks the encroachments of a fragmented, alienated modern society.
• Cultivation of the soil "has within it a positive spiritual good" and from it the cultivator acquires the virtues of "honor, manliness, self-reliance, courage, moral integrity, and hospitality." They result from a direct contact with nature and, through nature, a closer relationship to God. The agrarian is blessed in that they follow the example of God in creating order out of chaos.

History

The philosophical roots of agrarianism include European and Chinese philosophers. The Chinese school of Agriculturalism (农家/農家) was a philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism. In societies influenced by Confucianism, the farmer was considered an esteemed productive member of society, but merchants who made money were looked down upon. That influenced European intellectuals like François Quesnay, an avid Confucianist and advocate of China's agrarian policies, in forming the French agrarian philosophy of physiocracy. The physiocrats, along with the ideas of John Locke and the Romantic Era, formed the basis of modern European and American agrarianism.

Types of agrarianism

Jeffersonian democracy

Thomas Jefferson and his supporters idealised farmers as the citizens that the American Republic should be formed around.

 

The United States president Thomas Jefferson was an agrarian who based his ideas about the budding American democracy around the notion that farmers are “the most valuable citizens” and the truest republicans. Jefferson and his support base were committed to American republicanism, which saw as being in opposition to aristocracy, opposition to corruption, and priority on virtue, exemplified by the "yeoman farmer", "planters", and the "plain folk". While praising the rural farmfolk, the Jeffersonians felt that financiers, bankers and industrialists created "cesspools of corruption" in the cites and should thus be avoided.

The Jeffersonians sought to orientate the American economy more towards agriculture than industry. Part of their motive to do was Jefferson's fear that the over industrialisation of America would create a class of wage laborers who relied on their employers for income and sustenance. In turn, these workers would cease to be independent voters as their vote could be manipulated by said employers. In order to counter this, Jefferson introduced, as scholar Clay Jenkinson noted, "a graduated income tax that would serve as a disincentive to vast accumulations of wealth and would make funds available for some sort of benign redistribution downward" as well as tariffs on imported articles, which were mainly purchased by the wealthy. In 1811 Jefferson, writing to a friend, explained: These revenues will be levied entirely on the rich . ... The Rich alone use imported article, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. The poor man ... pays not a farthing of tax to the General Government, but on his salt.

Agrarian socialism

Agrarian socialism is a form of agrarianism that is anti-capitalist in nature and seeks to introduce socialist economic systems in their stead.

Zapatismo

Emiliano Zapata fought in the Mexican Revolution in the name of the Mexican peasants and sought to introduce reforms such as land redistribution.

 

Notable agrarian socialists include Emiliano Zapata who was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution. As part of the Liberation Army of the South, his group of revolutionaries fought on behalf of the Mexican peasants, whom they saw as exploited by the landowning classes. Zapata published Plan of Ayala, which called for significant land reforms and land redistribution in Mexico as part of the revolution. Zapata was killed and his forces crushed over the course of the Revolution, but his political ideas lived on in the form of Zapatismo.

Zapatismo would form the basis for neozapatismo, the ideology of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Known as Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or EZLN in Spanish, EZLN is a far-left libertarian socialist political and militant group that emerged in the state of Chiapas in southmost Mexico in 1994. EZLN and Neozapatismo, as explicit in their name, seek to revive the agrarian socialist movement of Zapata, but fuse it with new elements such as a commitment to indigenous rights and community-level decision making.

Subcommander Marcos, a leading member of the movement, argues that the peoples' collective ownership of the land was and is the basis for all subsequent developments the movement sought to create:

…When the land became property of the peasants … when the land passed into the hands of those who work it … [This was] the starting point for advances in government, health, education, housing, nutrition, women’s participation, trade, culture, communication, and information …[it was] recovering the means of production, in this case, the land, animals, and machines that were in the hands of large property owners.”

Maoism

Maoism, the far-left ideology of Mao Zedong and his followers, places a heavy emphasis on the role of peasants in its goals. In contrast to other Marxist schools of thought which normally seek to acquire the support of urban workers, Maoism sees the peasantry as key. Believing that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun", Maoism saw the Chinese Peasantry as the prime source for a Marxist vanguard because it possessed two qualities: (i) they were poor, and (ii) they were a political blank slate; in Mao's words, “A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful words can be written on it”. During the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War, Mao and the Chinese Communist Party made extensive use of peasants and rural bases in their military tactics, often eschewing the cities.

Following the eventual victory of the Communist Party in both wars, the countryside and how it should be run remained a focus for Mao. In 1958 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, a social and economic campaign which, amongst other things, altered many aspects of rural Chinese life. It introduced mandatory collective farming and forced the peasantry to organize itself into communal living units which were known as people's communes. These communes, which consisted of 5,000 people on average, were expected to meet high production quotas while the peasants who lived on them adapted to this radically new way of life. The communes were run as co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points. Peasants who criticised this new system were persecuted as "rightists" and "counter-revolutionaries". Leaving the communes was forbidden and escaping from them was difficult or impossible, and those who attempted it were subjected to party-orchestrated "public struggle sessions," which further jeopardized their survival. These public criticism sessions were often used to intimidate the peasants into obeying local officials and they often devolved into little more than public beatings.

On the communes, experiments were conducted in order to find new methods of planting crops, efforts were made to construct new irrigation systems on a massive scale, and the communes were all encouraged to produce steel backyard furnaces as part of an effort to increase steel production. However, following the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Mao had instilled a mass distrust of intellectuals into China, and thus engineers were often not consulted with regard to the new irrigation systems and the wisdom of asking untrained peasants to produce good quality steel from scrap iron was not publicly questioned. Similarly, the experimentation with the crops did not produce results. In addition to this the Four Pests Campaign was launched, in which the peasants were called upon to destroy sparrows and other wild birds that ate crop seeds, in order to protect fields. Pest birds were shot down or scared away from landing until they dropped from exhaustion. This campaign resulted in an ecological disaster that saw an explosion of the vermin population, especially crop-eating insects, which was consequently not in danger of being killed by predators.

None of these new systems were working, but local leaders did not dare to state this, instead, they falsified reports so as not to be punished for failing to meet the quotas. In many cases they stated that they were greatly exceeding their quotas, and in turn, the Chinese state developed a completely false sense of success with regard to the commune system.

All of this culminated in the Great Chinese Famine, which began in 1959, lasted 3 years, and saw an estimated 15 to 30 million Chinese people die. A combination of bad weather and the new, failed farming techniques that were introduced by the state led to massive shortages of food. By 1962, the Great Leap Forward was declared to be at an end.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mao once again radically altered life in rural China with the launching of the Down to the Countryside Movement. As a response to the Great Chinese Famine, the Chinese President Liu Shaoqi began "sending down" urban youths to rural China in order to recover its population losses and alleviate overcrowding in the cities. However, Mao turned the practice into a political crusade, declaring that the sending down would strip the youth of any bourgeois tendencies by forcing them to learn from the unprivileged rural peasants. In reality, it was the Communist Party's attempt to reign in the Red Guards, who had become uncontrollable during the course of the Cultural Revolution. 10% of the 1970 urban population of China was sent out to remote rural villages, often in Inner Mongolia. The villages, which were still poorly recovering from the effects of the Great Chinese Famine, did not have the excess resources that were needed to support the newcomers. Furthermore, the so-called "sent-down youth" had no agricultural experience and as a result, they were unaccustomed to the harsh lifestyle that existed in the countryside, and their unskilled labor in the villages provided little benefit to the agricultural sector. As a result, many of the sent-down youth died in the countryside. The relocation of the youths was originally intended to be permanent, but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party relented and some of those who had the capacity to return to the cities were allowed to do so.

In imitation of Mao's policies, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia (who were heavily funded and supported by the People's Republic of China) created their own version of the Great Leap Forward which was known as "Maha Lout Ploh". With the Great Leap Forward as its model, it had similarly disastrous effects, contributing to what is now known as the Cambodian genocide. As a part of the Maha Lout Ploh, the Khmer Rouge sought to create an entirely agrarian socialist society by forcibly relocating 100,000 people to move from Cambodia's cities into newly created communes. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot sought to "purify" the country by setting it back to "Year Zero", freeing it from "corrupting influences". Besides trying to completely de-urbanize Cambodia, ethnic minorities were slaughtered along with anyone else who was suspected of being a "reactionary" or a member of the "bourgeoisie", to the point that wearing glasses was seen as grounds for execution. The killings were only brought to an end when Cambodia was invaded by the neighboring socialist nation of Vietnam, whose army toppled the Khmer Rouge. However, with Cambodia's entire society and economy in disarray, including its agricultural sector, the country still plunged into renewed famine due to vast food shortages. However, as international journalists began to report on the situation and send images of it out to the world, a massive international response was provoked, leading to one of the most concentrated relief efforts of its time.

Agrarian parties

Peasant parties first appeared across Eastern Europe between 1860 and 1910, when commercialized agriculture and world market forces disrupted traditional rural society, and the railway and growing literacy facilitated the work of roving organizers. Agrarian parties advocated land reforms to redistribute land on large estates among those who work it. They also wanted village cooperatives to keep the profit from crop sales in local hands and credit institutions to underwrite needed improvements. Many peasant parties were also nationalist parties because peasants often worked their land for the benefit of landlords of different ethnicity.

Peasant parties rarely had any power before World War I but some became influential in the interwar era, especially in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. For a while, in the 1920s and the 1930s, there was a Green International (International Agrarian Bureau) based on the peasant parties in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Serbia. It functioned primarily as an information center that spread the ideas of agrarianism and combating socialism on the left and landlords on the right and never launched any significant activities.

Tunisia

The Farmers' Voice Party won a seat in the district of Jendouba after the parliamentary election of 2014.

Europe

Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (BZNS) was organized in 1899 to resist taxes and build cooperatives. BZNS came to power in 1919 and introduced many economic, social, and legal reforms. However, conservative forces crushed BZNS in a 1923 coup and assassinated its leader, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923). BZNS was made into a communist puppet group until 1989, when it reorganized as a genuine party.

Czechoslovakia

In Czechoslovakia, the Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholder People often shared power in parliament as a partner in the five-party pětka coalition. The party's leader, Antonin Svehla (1873–1933), was prime minister several times. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters. The party was banned by the National Front after the Second World War.

France

In France, the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party is a moderate conservative, agrarian party, reaching a peak of 4.23% in the 2002 French presidential election. It would later on become affiliated to France's main conservative party, Union for a Popular Movement.

Ireland

In the late 19th century, the Irish National Land League aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The "Land War" of 1878–1909 led to the Irish Land Acts, ending absentee landlords and ground rent and redistributing land among peasant farmers.

Post-independence, the Farmers' Party operated in the Irish Free State from 1922, folding into the National Centre Party in 1932. It was mostly supported by wealthy farmers in the east of Ireland. 

Clann na Talmhan (Family of the Land; also called the National Agricultural Party) was founded in 1938. They focused more on the poor smallholders of the west, supporting land reclamation, afforestation, social democracy and rates reform. They formed part of the governing coalition of the Government of the 13th Dáil and Government of the 15th Dáil. Economic improvement in the 1960s saw farmers vote for other parties and Clann na Talmhan disbanded in 1965.

Latvia

In Latvia, the Union of Greens and Farmers is supportive of traditional small farms and perceives them as more environmentally friendly than large-scale farming: Nature is threatened by development, while small farms are threatened by large industrial-scale farms.

Lithuania

In Lithuania, as of 2017, the government is led by the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union, under the leadership of industrial farmer Ramūnas Karbauskis.

Poland

In Poland, the Polish People's Party traces its tradition to an agrarian party in Austro-Hungarian-controlled Galician Poland. After the fall of the communist regime, PPP's biggest success came in 1993 elections, where it won 132 out of 460 parliamentary seats. Since then, PPP's support has steadily declined, until 2019, when they formed Polish Coalition with an anti- establishment, direct democracy Kukiz'15 party, and managed to get 8.5% of votes. Moreover, PPP tends to get much better results in local elections. In 2014 elections they have managed to get 23.88% of votes. 

The right-wing Law and Justice party has also become supportive of agrarian policies in recent years and polls show that most of their support comes from rural areas.

Romania

In Romania, older parties from Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia merged to become the National Peasants' Party in 1926. Iuliu Maniu (1873–1953) was a prime minister with an agrarian cabinet from 1928–1930 and briefly in 1932–1933, but the Great Depression made proposed reforms impossible. The communist regime dissolved the party in 1947, but it reformed in 1989 after they fell from power.

The reformed party, which also incorporated elements of Christian democracy in its ideology, governed Romania as part of the Romanian Democratic Convention between 1996–2000.

Serbia

In Serbia, Nikola Pašić (1845–1926) and his People's Radical Party dominated Serbian politics after 1903. The party also monopolized power in Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1929. During the dictatorship of the 1930s, the prime minister was from that party.

Ukraine

In Ukraine, the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko has promised to purify the country of oligarchs "with a pitchfork". The party advocates a number of traditional left-wing positions (a progressive tax structure, a ban on agricultural land sale and eliminating the illegal land market, a tenfold increase in budget spending on health, setting up primary health centres in every village), and mixes them with strong nationalist sentiments.

United Kingdom

The heyday of British agrarianism was in the 1500s, led by the Tudor royal advisors, who sought to maintain a broad pool of agricultural commoners from which to draw military men, against the interests of larger landowners who sought enclosure (meaning of common land). This was reversed by Acts of Parliament which effected the latter policy, chiefly in the 1650 to 1800 period (see enclosure). Politicians standing strongly as reactionaries to enclosure included the Levellers, anti-industrialist Luddites and, later, radicals such as William Cobbett. A high level of net self-sufficiency has a strong base in the national policy debate of successive governments, epitomised in successive centuries by Peelites, the Campaign for Rural England, and local food (anti food-miles) advocates.

Oceania

Australia

Historian F.K. Crowley finds that:

Australian farmers and their spokesman have always considered that life on the land is inherently more virtuous, as well as more healthy, more important and more productive, than life in the towns and cities....The farmers complained that something was wrong with an electoral system which produced parliamentarians who spent money beautifying vampire-cities instead of developing the interior.

The National Party of Australia (formerly called the Country Party), from the 1920s to the 1970s, promulgated its version of agrarianism, which it called "countrymindedness". The goal was to enhance the status of the graziers (operators of big sheep ranches) and small farmers and justified subsidies for them.

New Zealand

The New Zealand Liberal Party aggressively promoted agrarianism in its heyday (1891–1912). The landed gentry and aristocracy ruled Britain at this time. New Zealand never had an aristocracy but its wealthy landowners largely controlled politics before 1891. The Liberal Party set out to change that by a policy it called "populism." Richard Seddon had proclaimed the goal as early as 1884: "It is the rich and the poor; it is the wealthy and the landowners against the middle and labouring classes. That, Sir, shows the real political position of New Zealand." The Liberal strategy was to create a large class of small landowning farmers who supported Liberal ideals. The Liberal government also established the basis of the later welfare state such as old age pensions and developed a system for settling industrial disputes, which was accepted by both employers and trade unions. In 1893, it extended voting rights to women, making New Zealand the first country in the world to do so.

To obtain land for farmers, the Liberal government from 1891 to 1911 purchased 3,100,000 acres (1,300,000 ha) of Maori land. The government also purchased 1,300,000 acres (530,000 ha) from large estate holders for subdivision and closer settlement by small farmers. The Advances to Settlers Act (1894) provided low-interest mortgages, and the agriculture department disseminated information on the best farming methods. The Liberals proclaimed success in forging an egalitarian, anti-monopoly land policy. The policy built up support for the Liberal Party in rural North Island electorates. By 1903, the Liberals were so dominant that there was no longer an organized opposition in Parliament.

Back-to-the-land movement

Agrarianism is similar to but not identical with the back-to-the-land movement. Agrarianism concentrates on the fundamental goods of the earth, on communities of more limited economic and political scale than in modern society, and on simple living, even when the shift involves questioning the "progressive" character of some recent social and economic developments. Thus, agrarianism is not industrial farming, with its specialization on products and industrial scale.

Back-to-the-land movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-the-land_movement 

 

A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists.

The concept was popularized in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century by activist Bolton Hall, who set up vacant lot farming in New York City and wrote many books on the subject. The practice, however, was strong in Europe even before that time.

 

During World War II, when Great Britain faced a blockade by Nazi U-boats, a "Dig for Victory" campaign urged civilians to fight food shortages by growing vegetables on any available patch of land. In the USA between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s there was a revived back-to-the-land movement, with substantial numbers migrating from cities to rural areas.

The back-to-the-land movement has ideological links to distributism, a 1920s and 1930s attempt to find a "Third Way" between capitalism and socialism.

The movement throughout history

The American social commentator and poet Gary Snyder has related that there have been back-to-the-land population movements throughout the centuries, and throughout the world, largely due to the occurrence of severe urban problems and people's felt need to live a better life, often simply to survive.

The historian and philosopher of urbanism Jane Jacobs remarked in an interview with Stewart Brand that with the Fall of Rome city dwellers re-inhabited the rural areas of the region.

From another point of departure, Yi-Fu Tuan takes a view that such trends have often been privileged and motivated by sentiment. "Awareness of the past is an important element in the love of place," he writes, in his 1974 book Topophilia. Tuan writes that an appreciation of nature springs from wealth, privilege, and the antithetical values of cities. He argues that literature about land (and, subsequently, about going back to the land) is largely sentimental; "little," he writes, "is known about the farmer's attitudes to nature..." Tuan finds historical instances of the desire of the civilized to escape civilization in the Hellenistic, Roman, Augustan, and Romantic eras, and, from one of the earliest recorded myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The movement in North America

Regarding North America, many individuals and households have moved from urban or suburban circumstances to rural ones at different times; for instance, the economic theorist and land-based American experimenter Ralph Borsodi (author of Flight from the City) is said to have influenced thousands of urban-living people to try a modern homesteading life during the Great Depression. The New Deal town of Arthurdale, West Virginia was built in 1933 using the back-to-the-land ideas current at the time.

There was again a fair degree of interest in moving to rural land after World War II. In 1947, Betty MacDonald published what became a popular book, The Egg and I, telling her story of marrying and then moving to a small farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. This story was the basis of a successful comedy film starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. 

The Canadian writer Farley Mowat says that many returned veterans after World War II sought a meaningful life far from the ignobility of modern warfare, regarding his own experience as typical of the pattern. In Canada, those who sought a life completely outside of the cities, suburbs, and towns frequently moved into semi-wilderness environs. 

But what made the later phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s especially significant was that the rural-relocation trend was sizable enough that it was identified in the American demographic statistics. 

Roots of this movement can perhaps be traced to some of Bradford Angier's books, such as At Home in the Woods (1951) and We Like it Wild (1963), Louise Dickinson Rich's We Took to the Woods (1942) and subsequent books, or perhaps even more compellingly to the 1954 publication of Helen and Scott Nearing's book, Living the Good Life. This book chronicles the Nearings' move to an older house in a rural area of Vermont and their self-sufficient and simple lifestyle. In their initial move, the Nearings were driven by the circumstances of the Great Depression and influenced by earlier writers, particularly Henry David Thoreau. Their book was published six years after A Sand County Almanac, by the ecologist and environmental activist Aldo Leopold, was published, in 1948. Influences aside, the Nearings had planned and worked hard, developing their homestead and life according to a twelve-point plan they had drafted.

The narrative of Phil Cousineau's documentary film Ecological Design: Inventing the Future asserts that in the decades after World War II, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry... There was a clarion call for a return to a life of human scale." By the late 1960s, many people had recognized that, leaving their city or suburban lives, they completely lacked any familiarity with such basics of life as food sources (for instance, what a potato plant looks like, or the act of milking a cow) — and they felt out of touch with nature, in general. While the back-to-the-land movement was not strictly part of the counterculture of the 1960s, the two movements had some overlap in participation.

Many people were attracted to getting more in touch with the basics just mentioned, but the movement could also have been fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution. Events such as the Watergate scandal and the 1973 energy crisis contributed to these views. Some people rejected the struggle and boredom of "moving up the company ladder." Paralleling the desire for reconnection with nature was a desire to reconnect with physical work. Farmer and author Gene Logsdon expressed the aim aptly as: "the kind of independence that defines success in terms of how much food, clothing, shelter, and contentment I could produce for myself rather than how much I could buy."

There was also a segment within the movement who already had a familiarity with rural life and farming, who already had skills, and who wanted land of their own on which they could demonstrate that organic farming could be made practical and economically successful.

Besides the Nearings and other authors writing later along similar lines, another influence from the world of American publishing was the unprecedented, vigorous, and intelligent Whole Earth Catalogs. Stewart Brand and a circle of friends and family began the effort in 1968, because Brand believed that there was a groundswell of biologists, designers, engineers, sociologists, organic farmers, and social experimenters who wished to transform civilization along lines that might be called "sustainable". Brand and cohorts created a catalog of "tools" - defined broadly to include useful books, design aids, maps, gardening implements, carpentry and masonry tools, metalworking equipment, and a great deal more.

Another important publication was The Mother Earth News, a periodical (originally on newsprint) that was founded a couple years after the Catalog. Ultimately gaining a large circulation, the magazine was focused on how-to articles, personal stories of successful and budding homesteaders, interviews with key thinkers, and the like. The magazine stated its philosophy was based on returning to people a greater measure of control of their own lives.

Many of the North American back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 1970s made use of the Mother Earth News, the Whole Earth Catalogs and derivative publications. But as time went on, the movement itself drew more people into it, more or less independently of impetus from the publishing world.