Hero to modern day organic farming.

The conservationist (click here) agricultural practices developed by George Washington Carver at the beginning of the twentieth century increased agricultural sustainability for poor African-American farmers in the U.S. Deep South. An expert in revitalizing soil, Carver worked through the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to publicize composting techniques and the importance of crop rotation , which helped combat soil depletion and pest infestation in the region's overcultivated cotton and tobacco fields.

...Formal education of blacks was not widespread, and only through his own tenacity did Carver become Iowa State's first African-American college graduate, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1894 and a master of science degree in 1896....

... In 1896, Carver took a job at the Tuskegee Institute, where he discovered how rotating alternative crops such as sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, and especially peanuts restored nitrogen to depleted soil. Carver also experimented with hybridization to increase plant resistance to common pests. To popularize his methods, Carver wrote instructional manuals, and in 1906 he founded the "moveable school" to give hands-on demonstrations to illiterate farmers. This school on wheels taught approximately 2,000 farmers per month during its first summer, and served as a model for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's extension program...