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How organics went from hippy to hip

Way back in the sixties the organic movement was firmly underground, led by eco warriors and barely heard of by your average consumer. But over the decades it has undergone a quiet revolution, evolving from 'fad' status to becoming an essential way of life for much of the population

Where once upon a time you were thought of as a bit of a nutter for buying organic food and embracing green issues, in the new millennium it is de-rigueur to buy your organic peanut butter and think about your carbon foot print.

Something that was a bit fringe is now so mainstream that the majority of people now knowingly buy organic food. It's grown beyond buying organic fruit, vegetables and meat so that consumers now buy organic store cupboard staples such as cereals, teas, spreads, jams, ketchup and even sparkling drinks.

And the most impressive thing about this turnaround is that it has been largely a grass-roots movement pushing against the might of much larger food and farming industries. The bottom line is that people have voted, with their purses, to say that they have had enough.

What started life as an instinctive protest by a few people to the industrialisation of farming and food production, has come full circle with the formalisation of this disparate movement. In essence, the organic hippies of yesteryear have grown up, got wise and got organised.

Earth matters

The organic movement started life as a precise concern about the soil with the idea that fertilisers and pesticides made from artificial chemicals, and the cycle of not putting back into the soil what was being taken out, would lead to the soil being denuded and unable to support healthy plants. The visionary book The Living Soil, written by Lady Balfour, led directly to the establishment in the UK of the Soil Association, named for this concern about the soil.

The sixties came with a freeing of the shackles of conventional expectations. It was at this time that more modern pioneers such as Craig Sams and his brother Gregory started Seed, the first organic macrobiotic restaurant in London's Notting Hill.

In true 1960s rebellion style, when offered a 600-acre intensive cattle-rearing facility by his uncle in the US, Sams went to the other extreme by embracing wholefoods, veganism and an organic lifestyle.

But such an approach was still rare, and potential investors in his burgeoning organic empire would regularly ask, over the decades: 'How long is this organic fad going to last?' Sams calmly answered those doubtful 'grey suits' by going on to set up big-name brands Whole Earth and, with his wife Josephine Fairley, Green & Blacks.

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