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This chapter explores the intersections between the breastfeeding movement, environmentalism, and second-wave feminism from the 1950s through the 1980s. Concern over environmental toxins was one of the first issues to draw breastfeeding supporters out of the domestic sphere and into the political realm as they advocated publicly and through their daily life-choices as consumers and household managers for a more “natural” life free from the destructive consequences of technological interventions upon the family. As this chapter also shows, however, the widening appeal of this natural ideology by the early 1970s not only helped expose more mothers to the breastfeeding movement, it also led to a polarization in the interests and political leanings of the community. As breastfeeding rates began to noticeably increase by the 1970s, the ideological connection between natural motherhood and breastfeeding became a point of contention as lower-income and working mothers increasingly sought the same kind of maternal experience as their wealthier, stay-at-home peers.

This chapter traces the early history of the organic movement, emphasizing three debates that would persist to the present: what specifically defines organic practices, the role of spirituality versus science in organic philosophy, and the relationship between organic advocacy and broader social issues. Early 20^th century organic pioneers such as Albert Howard, Eve Balfour and Rudolf Steiner introduced this approach to farming in Europe. In the United States publisher J.I. Rodale trumpeted the cause and spread organic philosophy through his magazines starting in the 1940s, a time when industrial agriculture practices and the use of synthetic chemicals in farming were on the rise. Rodale built a small following, but organic remained fairly marginal until it attracted the interest of the counterculture in the 1960s. It was at this point that the organic cause began to take on the formal characteristics of a social movement.

Mark Schultz delves into the life of Benjamin F. Hubert, a rural reformer in Georgia who tried to stem the flood away from farming by establishing a viable independent black town, the Log Cabin Community. He allied with other African American agrarian reformers who urged blacks to separate themselves from white society and return to the land to live an independent life sheltered from white supremacy and unequal citizenship. Hubert's strategy based in cooperative farming, scientific agriculture, and industrial education transformed tenants into landowners, sustained rural communities, and allowed farmers to provide for their children. He founded the Association for the Advancement of Negro Country Life in 1928 and used his position as president of the black land-grant college in Georgia to promote his utopian ideal. Children raised on farms owned by their parents tended to get a better education than sharecroppers' children. The owners' children developed self-reliant habits of mind and a sense of optimism that they could succeed despite the barriers thrown up by white supremacy. Many of these children found their way into the northern urban middle class. In doing so, they demonstrated that farm owning offered both immediate security and a path out of poverty.