|
May 19, 2005; B05 By Patricia Sullivan 
Paul Keene, 94, one of the founders of the U.S. organic food movement, died April 23 at Messiah Village Nursing Home in Mechanicsburg, Pa., not far from the farm where he launched the modern commercial market for natural foods. No cause of death was reported.
Mr. Keene, the owner of Walnut Acres Farm in Penns Creek, Pa., turned from teaching college mathematics to coaxing earthworms and beneficial insects back into the depleted soil. In the rich organic earth that resulted, he grew crops that he processed and sold through his own mail-order catalogue. Before it was sold in 2000, the business had annual sales of $10 million. The catalyst for his dramatic change in occupation came after Mr. Keene spent two years in India, where he discovered the work of Sir Albert Howard, founder of the worldwide organic farming movement. He also studied under Gandhi, who suggested he simplify his life by giving away all possessions. Mr. Keene did not take the advice literally, but he returned to the United States in 1940 determined to give his life more meaning. After a few years of teaching and learning about farming, he and his wife bought 100 acres of land in central Pennsylvania and began to grow crops. A neighbor, Jerome Irving Rodale, said he was thinking about starting a magazine, to be called Organic Farming and Gardening, and asked whether Mr. Keene wanted to be assistant editor. "I laughed and said, 'No sir, I think I'd rather farm,' " Mr. Keene later told George DeVault, editor and publisher of Rodale's now-defunct New Farm magazine. While the Department of Agriculture was urging U.S. farmers to use new chemical fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides, Mr. Keene doggedly picked rocks out of his stony fields and spread animal manure, adhering to the principle that healthy soil begets healthy food, and that manmade chemical assistance is unnecessary and potentially harmful. The Keenes' first harvest, from six old apple trees, was perhaps 15 bushels, DeVault said. Using a huge iron kettle over an open fire, they cooked the apples down to 100 quarts of apple butter and sold it for $1 per quart. The food editor of the New York Herald-Tribune happened to come across one of the jars and wrote her praises into print, which gave the Keenes' fledgling farm a lucrative jump-start into business. It took more than a decade to reliably make a profit, but by the end of the century, Walnut Acres Farm mailed about a million catalogues a year and offered more than 700 products. Katherine DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Association, said Mr. Keene was one of the first organic farmers in the nation and was the first to try to direct consumer marketing. There are now about 900 certified organic farmers in the United States, and their products account for $12 billion in sales annually, she said. "We've moved from the lunatic fringe to the leading edge of agriculture," Mr. Keene told U.S. News & World Report in 1995. "It doesn't seem that long ago that everyone thought we were kooks or commies." Mr. Keene and his family turned their business into an employee-owned enterprise, although they retained ownership of the land, which grew to 500 acres. He created the Walnut Acres Foundation, which funded a community center in Penns Creek and an orphanage in India. "Paul Keene was really the best of the organic farming movement and the best of the organic farming business," said Gene Kahn, founder of Cascadian Farms and Small Planet Foods. "He was the ideological thought leader, as far as I was concerned. His strong interest and enduring commitment to charity was a key part of his heritage." The perpetually smiling, gentlemanly philosopher-farmer was unapologetic for the comparatively high cost of his soups, jams, grains, vegetables and meats, telling the Chicago Tribune in 1990: "We pay less for food than any other country in the world, but we also pay more for health care and have more doctors than any other country. How come? Because we're stupid. The cost to society this way is much higher." Mr. Keene was born in Lititz, Pa., the son of a minister. He graduated from Lebanon Valley College and received a master's degree in mathematics from Yale University. He taught math at Drew University in Madison, N.J., before going to India in 1938 to teach and to study at Gandhi's village training school. "My experience in India inspired me to change my life completely," Mr. Keene wrote in "Fear Not to Sow Because of the Birds" (1988), a collection of his columns from the farm's catalogue. "I felt that the people of India possessed something I lacked in my life, and I was impelled to search for the missing quantity." He helped found the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and in 1998, the Organic Trade Association gave him its Organic Leadership Award. His wife of 47 years, Enid Betty Morgan, died in 1987. Survivors include three daughters, Marjorie Ann Hartley and Ruth Keene Anderson, both of Middleburg, Pa., and Jocelyn Betty Keene of Pasadena, Calif.; a sister; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company |