George Washington Carver

Written by Andrea Arcand

George Washington Carver (1864-1943) is most commonly known as “the peanut man,” because of his work in the peanut industry. However, he made many other significant contributions to environmentalism and agricultural science. He was one of the founders of the modern organic farming movement, and he introduced the restorative farming approach which we now call permaculture.

Born an enslaved person in Missouri a year before it was outlawed, Carver left home at 11 to pursue his education. He had always been keenly interested in plants, and he studied botany at Iowa State Agricultural School, eventually becoming the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. After earning his Master of Agriculture degree, he began work at Tuskegee Institute under Booker T. Washington as head of the Agriculture Department, where he worked for 47 years.

He developed the idea of crop rotation when he realized that years of growing cotton had depleted the soil on southern farms. He was passionate about liberating Black farmers from the oppression of sharecropping, and he invented the Jessup wagon as a means of traveling around to teach them the importance of healthy soil chemistry. He taught them about growing peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes in order to restore nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil. This dramatically increased crop yield as well as helped Black farmers achieve more food sovereignty. He also promoted the use of all-natural fertilizers such as compost, that were free to the farmers and better for the soil.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Carver, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/george-washington-carver, https://grist.org/fix/george-washington-carver-environmental-legacy/