The Organic Agriculture Information Access is an electronic collection of historic United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publications related to organic agriculture. In this collection, there are almost 200 documents published before 1942 (before synthetic chemicals became widely used) that contain state-of-the-art information and data that is still very pertinent for today's agriculture. Access to this data is intended to provide growers with new ideas on crop production without chemicals, as well as help researchers conserve scarce resources by avoiding unintended duplication. This collection is provided by the Alternative Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC) , a part of the National Agricultural Library (NAL) , with funding from the USDA National Organic Program and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. This effort is part of the AFSIC "Organic Roots" project. Go to UMDL Texts to search multiple collections. June 28, 2004.