Malabar Farm - by Abbott (Paperback)

From the Back Cover

Finalist, Ohioana Book Awards

How Malabar Farm pioneered soil conservation and grew the sustainable agriculture movement

Established in 1939 by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and farmer Louis Bromfield, Malabar Farm was once considered "the most famous farm in the world." Farmers, conservationists, politicians, businessmen, and even a few Hollywood celebrities--including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who married there--flocked to rural Ohio to see how Bromfield restored worn-out land to lush productivity using conservation practices. Permanent, sustainable agriculture, Bromfield preached, was the "New Agriculture" that would transform the postwar world.

Anneliese Abbott tells the story of Malabar Farm within the context of the wider histories of soil conservation and other environmental movements, especially the Ohio-based organization Friends of the Land. As one of the few surviving landmarks of this movement, which became an Ohio state park in 1976, Malabar Farm provides an intriguing case study of how soil conservation began, how it was marginalized during the 1950s, and how it now continues to influence the modern idea of sustainable agriculture.

To see Malabar strictly as a modern production farm--or a nature preserve, or the home of a famous novelist--oversimplifies the complexity of what Bromfield actually did. Malabar wasn't a conventional farm or an organic farm; it was both. It represents a middle ground that is often lacking in modern discussions about sustainability or environmental issues, yet it remains critically important. Today, as Malabar Farm State Park remains a working farm with a new interpretive center that opened in 2006, its importance and impact continue for current and future generations.

Review Quotes

Ohioana Award finalist for Best Book about Ohio/Ohioan (2022)

"This considered, rich history elevates Bromfield and his beloved farm to their rightful places as influential agricultural and environmental icons." --Foreword Reviews

"[Abbott] makes excellent use of manuscript sources to tell the story of author Louis Bromfield's encounter with the land and his interest in conservation techniques. .... [Malabar Farm] is a pleasure to read and well suited for a broad audience. Ample and well-selected illustrations complement the text. Readers will appreciate the role of Malabar Farm and its place in American soil conservation and sustainability." --Indiana Magazine of History

"Anneliese Abbott's book is a tribute to the importance of historical studies. .... Bromfield's work has been rediscovered, and recognized as being of practical value to a world seriously in need of food production methods which increase soil fertility and encourage the abundance of nature's ecology." --Agricultural History Review

"Malabar Farm: Louis Bromfield, Friends of the Land, and the Rise of Sustainable Agriculture is an impressively informative, well written, organized and presented study that will be of immense interest to sustainable agriculture advocates and practitioners." --Midwest Book Review

"This is a work of great passion, which finally puts Bromfield's soil crusade in historical context. With impeccable research and vivid prose, Anneliese Abbott captures the whole wild adventure of Malabar Farm and shows how our current conversation around sustainability grew out of these rolling fields in Ohio." --Stephen Heyman, author of The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution

"Malabar Farm presents well-researched information about Louis Bromfield that even many of his fans may not know, introduces names of less-famous environmentalists, and details the lengthy, heroic effort to save the farm. The author brings a scientist's familiarity with terminology of sustainable farming and the history of agriculture that only specialists will previously have had access to." --Deborah Fleming, winner of the PEN America Art of the Essay Award (2020) for Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio's Natural Landscape

About the Author

Anneliese Abbott grew up on a small Michigan farm. Her research on the history of Malabar Farm began while studying plant and soil science at the Ohio State University. She recently received a University Fellowship to begin graduate research on the history of organic/sustainable farming in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.