The founder of Rodale Press Inc., J. I. Rodale became known as the world’s foremost advocate of organically grown foods and natural food products while serving as publisher and editor of Organic Gardening and Farming and Prevention Magazines. In addition, he was a playwright, writer, patron of the arts, manufacturer, and a general critic of the conventional medical and agricultural establishments.
Born on New York City’s Lower East Side, he was one of eight children of a grocer. By his own admission he was a sickly child, subject to attacks of dizziness, colds and headaches, as well as being nearsighted and a poor athlete. Through a series of self-improvement and body-building courses, he overcame many of these handicaps. As his health improved, so did his determination to succeed at anything he tried, a quality which became ingrained in his character and helped him through many crusades against skeptics.
After graduation from high school, he studied accounting at night at New York and Columbia Universities, becoming an accountant for the Internal Revenue Service and then for a number of private corporations. While working as a accountant, JI had gone into the electrical manufacturing business with his brother, Joseph, and in 1930 they moved their firm from New York City to Emmaus, Pennsylvania. In 1930, JI entered publishing, with a small tabloid entitled the Humorous Scrapbook. The venture soon failed but was followed up with publication of a number of other magazines. Rodale’s publishing efforts in the late thirties, which centered around his literary interests and his attempts to learn how to write more effectively, were more successful. His Word Finder, sold under his own imprint through direct mail, became the first of many best seller’s.
In 1940, Rodale and his wife, Anna, purchased a farm in Emmaus and began to implement the theories of Sir Albert Howard, a British agronomist who believed that crops raised with fertilizer derived from natural animal and vegetable wastes were healthier than those raised with chemical fertilizers. JI integrated Howard’s basic tenets with his own intrinsic belief in the interrelatedness of nature, and formulated the organic method of building soil health. In 1940, JI published the first edition of “Organic Farming and Gardening”, laying the foundation for broad-based acceptance of the organic movement.
Rodale criticized conventional ideas of gardening and large-scale agriculture, and warned against the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. He praised composting, the value of earthworms, stone mulching, companion planting, and the benefits of certain insects. He also became one of the first advocates of the back to the land and self-sufficiency movements in the early 1940’s.
Receiving only ridicule from the government and the agricultural industry, JI, in 1947, formed the Soil and Health Foundation, a non-profit research foundation which awards grants to individuals and groups performing research in areas of organic interest.
Rodale was more interested in the health and nutritional aspects of gardening and farming than in actually tilling the soil. He was concerned with how foods were grown and their effect and nutrition. His lifelong concern with health came to fruition when he published the first issue of ” Prevention” in June of 1950. JI thought there was a real need for a magazine
like Prevention” to translate studies from medical and academic journals into easy-to-read stories about health accessible to the layperson. He advocated good diet and the use of natural vitamin and mineral supplements. He won many converts as he battled the FDA, AMA and countless governmental bureaucracies on issues related to food processing, artificial additives, pollution of the environment, the evils of sugar, and the low minimum daily requirements set by the federal government for vitamins.
In 1960, JI left the publishing activities of his company to his son, Robert, and pursued myriad personal ventures. His primary passion became playwriting. His plays, which are performed today by high school, college, and community groups, are morality plays about nutrition and health. He approached these unlikely themes with the same tenacity and defiance of convention that characterized his earlier battles with the agricultural and medical establishments.
He diversity of interests was clearly shown in the variety and number of publications which he founded, and in their treatment of topics ranging from the environment to foreign languages to theater news and crafts:
(1960) Compost Science
(1963) Health Bulletin
(1964) Quinto Lingo
(1966) Rodale’s New York
(1967) Theatre Crafts
(1967) Fitness For Living
(1970) Environment Action Bulletin, Executive Fitness
and Organic Food Marketing
Among JI’s many books are:
(1945) Pay Dirt
(1948) The Healthy Hunzas
(1948) The Organic Front
(1962) The Healthy Seeker
(1964) Our Poisoned Earth and Sky
(1967) Walk Do Not Run to the Doctor
(1968) Natural Health, Sugar and the Criminal Mind
(1968) The Prostate
(1968) Natural Health and Pregnancy
(1970) Happy People Rarely Get Cancer
(1970) Your Blood and Its Pressure
Care To Plant 