Charles Walters, Jr.

Charles Walters, Jr. (18 June 1926 – 14 January 2009) was an economist, journalist, publisher, editor, author, entrepreneur, and family farm advocate. A tireless advocate for "peoples capitalism", Walters was a president of the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM), a long-time executive board member, and founder and editor of Acres USA, the North American voice of eco-agriculture, organic farming, and the family farm.

Charles Walters, Jr. was born in Ness County, Kansas to Carl and Dorothea Walters, poor farmers struggling to survive the Dust Bowl. Walters' childhood was shaped first by the Dust Bowl, then by the Great Depression. He came of age following military service in the waning days of World War II. Once discharged, he received his undergraduate degree from Creighton University and earned a master's degree in economics from Denver University on the G.I. Bill.

As he made his way around several major urban centers before finally settling in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Ann, Charles Walters never lost his connection to the world of farming. As an economist and the son of a dirt farmer during the Kansas dust bowl, it was not lost on him when a flood of corporate money pushed the American farmer into an expensive new dependence on farm machinery, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides— about which little was known.

A turning point for him, as for many Americans, was the publication of Rachael Carson's Silent Spring in September 1962, which documented the detrimental effects pesticides were having on the environment. Carson's narrative would be the cornerstone of the point-of-view Walters would bring to his writings and social criticism.

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