Eighty years have passed since Rudolph Steiner, the Austrian philosopher, gave the eight lectures that would form the basis of bio-dynamic farming.
This agricultural movement has now spread around the world.
Biodynamic food is beginning to penetrate the mainstream marketplace, albeit slowly, and gaining a reputation as it does so for exceptional quality.
Unsurprisingly, biodynamic produce also commands a high price premium, even more so than organic food. But, that is supposed to reflect the sheer labour-intensive nature of a biodynamic farm: a conventional farm of a couple of hundred hectares might have two workers, while a biodynamic farm of similar size has 15.
In brief: a biodynamic farm must be seen as a whole living organism within the context of both the planet and the cosmos, with no chemicals used on the animals or soil, just homeopathic medicine, the preparations (seven recipes handed out by Steiner) or the compost made from the plant and animal waste on the farm.
A biodynamic farm must, therefore, be as self-sustaining as possible. A mixture of animals and crops is preferred, and planting and harvesting are to take into consideration the moon’s orbit and the constellations of the stars. The soil, the earthworms, the microbial activity beneath the surface — these are the most vital aspects of the farm.
Quackery or scientifically grounded? For most scientists, it is, as one agricultural scientist who wished not to be named put it, ”absolute rubbish”.
Take Steiner’s ”Preparation 500”: manure stuffed into a cow horn, then buried under ground throughout winter before being mixed in homeopathic quantities into gallons of water stirred first clockwise and then anticlockwise for exactly one hour before being sprayed over the earth.
In 2002, a Swiss paper on organic farming published by Science magazine concluded that biodynamically tended soil showed higher levels of microbial activity than either conventionally or organically farmed soil.
There is, however, one aspect of biodynamic farming which some scientists cite as a possible explanation for the quality of biodynamic food. It is simply the passion the biodynamic farmer feels for his farm.
As one farmer says, there is an old farming expression. ”The best fertilizer is the farmer’s footprint.” — Â