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Make a Trip to Vedic
America’s First All-Organic City
 Organic is in. Organic food is the fastest
growing segment of the U.S. food industry; a robust 17-20% annual growth rate
compared to 2-3% for conventional foods. There is also the upstart but booming
industry of organic clothing and organic cosmetics and even green, organic
building materials for homes.
And now, for the first time, there is an
entire city that certifies itself as organic.
In the lush rolling farm fields of southeast Iowa lies Vedic City whose city
council just passed an official ordinance mandating organic-only farm fields,
park lands, and office and residential gardens within the city limits. With a
population of about 200, Vedic has become the nation’s first all-organic city,
banning the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers within city limits in
accordance with state and federal organic program standards.
The city, chartered in 2001 by followers of
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, banned the sale of non-organic food within city limits in
2003. This just takes it a step further according to Maureen Wynne. Followers of the Maharishi,
guru to the Beatles, came to southeast Iowa in the mid 1970s when they bought
the former Parsons College campus in Fairfield. When they founded nearby
Maharishi Vedic City, it was decreed that all construction must follow design
principles set by the Maharishi for optimum harmony with nature. The city’s
ordinance does not require homeowners to use organic materials in construction,
but the design rules do require the use of as few toxic materials as possible,
Wynne said.
 “The
people in the city were already using all-organic products, so this ordinance is
making a policy of what was already the unwritten policy,” Wynne said,
city attorney and one of the city’s founders. “There are a lot of organic
products that can be used on lawns, shrubs and gardens that people already use.
It just reinforces that.”
Joan Shaffer, an organic expert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said
the agency’s organic program is a marketing tool for produce and doesn’t really
pertain to such things as lawns and shrubs. “If they want to say it’s an organic
town, we have no jurisdiction over that. They can’t call it USDA certified
organic,” Shaffer said. “But if they grow a tomato, that is under our
jurisdiction.”
Wynne said the formal adoption of an all-organic ordinance is not intended to
have the city certified organic. “It’s attractive, for one thing, to people.
Another is it puts people on notice who are moving here,” she said.
Kathleen Delate, associate professor with Iowa State University’s Department of
Horticulture and Agronomy, said Maharishi Vedic City could likely be the first
city in the country to go all organic. “There have been components of organic
used elsewhere,” she said. For instance, San Francisco has adopted a low
pesticide approach in city parks and Santa Cruz, Calif., has an all-organic golf
course, she said. “But as far as 100 percent organic, I think it’s the first,”
Delate said. “This will be a great experiment to watch.”
Vedic City is also Iowa’s newest city in 20
years and is home to successful doctors, lawyers, architects, entrepreneurs, and
farmers and their families, comprising all religious backgrounds, who moved here
from across America to build a model city of environmental sustainability and
renewability.
Known as the “Mayo Clinic of Alternative Medicine,” the City area is also home
to: The Raj, a world-class Ayurvedic health spa, The Center for Natural Medicine
and Prevention, a $20 million federally funded research institute dedicated to
investigating the effects of complementary and alternative medicine on heart
disease, Maharishi Vedic City Organic Farms, one of the largest organic
vegetable greenhouse operations in the Midwest, Maharishi University and
Maharishi School (K-12), award-winning educational institutions where the
students grow their own organic food for the cafeteria.
Rather than a departure from the norm,
Vedic City considers its new policy to be leading the way for small-town living
in the nation.
For more information contact: Steven
Yellin 641-470-1319 or syellin@mum.edu
Edited by Erika Wright
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