Readers of narratives of the history of organic farming in Australia will be familiar with such accounts beginning in the "1980s". In questing after the earliest organic farming society, and more particularly in pursuing the spread of the "organic" meme from its 1940 birth in Britain, it was therefore a great surprise to uncover the Australian Organic Faming and Gardening Society (AOFGS) founded in October 1944. This appears to be the world's first "organic farming" association. It also resets the organic clock for Australia back by four decades. Here was an association, pre-dating the UK Soil Association by two years, formed half a world away from the birthplace of "organic", in a country at war, under food rationing, and with its workforce under Manpower regulations. Yet organic farming principles were clearly articulated by this Society, perhaps as clearly articulated as they have ever been, and particularised for Australia. The Society was constrained from publishing their journal due to wartime constraints on paper. The first appearance of the Organic Farming Digest (OFD) was in April 1946. Thereafter, for nearly a decade, the Society regularly published a journal, with the last issue appearing in 1954. This paper explores the Society; its principles; its journals; its people; its interactions with key organic figures of the time including Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, Eve Balfour, Albert Howard, and Jerome Rodale; its Australian contributors from five states, including Colonel Harold White and Professor Sir Stanton Hicks; its progress and ultimately its demise; and touch on how this history became lost
