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The Farmer and the Land
By Herbert Koepf
As the pressures for short term gains in production persist, the problems with toxicological risks, economics, and disrupted ecosystems become more and more complex. Thus the farmer is placed in a conflict with nature and humanity as a whole. What once was a happy marriage between nature and culture has been torn asunder, with the consequence that many human values associated with farming have been lost for the farmer. Though many are aware of the technological innovations adopted by modern agriculture, few are aware of the impact of these innovations on the daily thinking, motivation, and lifestyle of the farmer.
Both destructive social and environmental effects and impressive increases in agricultural yields are the children of conventional scientific thinking. Important factors that influence today’s agriculture are:
• the general economic conditions and costs of labour,
• agricultural policy and government incentives
• university research and training
• sales pressure from industry and the lending practices of bank officers
• the farmers’ request for income parity with the industrial and service sectors.
These factors are strong powers, and they have changed the lives of those who work the land. They are the consequences of the competitive economic integration of farming into the system of industrial growth. The result is that it is less and less the farmers’ own genuine motives that make them adopt a particular system of production. Circumstances are at work that in essence are alien to the life conditions of agriculture proper. The structure of sound agriculture must be based on how one grows food and feed according to the laws of living nature. These conditions are met in the best possible way in diversified farming systems fashioned in the image of a living organism.
Proper farming today depends on farmers having the freedom to choose their own methods. Such freedom is a prerequisite for creative thought and a responsible attitude toward the land. Structural and social conditions of this kind are best met in family farms with mixed husbandry, which are typical for the northern temperate zone. Mixed husbandry had been the strength of rural society almost up to the 1960s. Within a few decades much of the inherent natural and human substance had been sacrificed to what was seen as organizational and technical progress.
For the biodynamic grower, mastering “the craft of farming” is vital. Within the boundaries of his farm he cares for a site-adapted program that usually includes plant and animal husbandry. Yield and yield dependability, the input-output ratio, the healthy growth of plants and animals, all depend on the interplay of the components that make up the farm. The system lives by the mutual support of its parts and thus can only be properly described as a kind of organism. The proper handling of this organism is a matter of practice, experience, love of the land, respect for it, and a desire to protect and preserve it, but also of active and enlivened thought.
What feeds the motives of biodynamic farmers? Their concern is to take proper care of the soil and all creatures under their responsibility. The social forms and human values of traditional agriculture strengthened the feeling of responsibility for the land and what grows on it. But powerful forces are active that erode such attitudes. Nowadays, many of those who grow up in a rural district expect the city to offer them a more rewarding life. On the other hand, there is a smaller but slowly growing number of people who try to live a meaningful life on the land. They come from urban backgrounds. Their search is not always carried by a realistic image of farming or gardening, but it is often genuine and sincere. The strong ones meet the challenge, but many others have to leave. One encounters in our time many human destinies that have to find their way to the hardships and rewards of a rural life. An understanding of these individuals reveals that ultimately the decision to choose this work comes from within.
A materialistic world view can never kindle the motivation for a way of farming in harmony with life proper. Yet such harmony is a prerequisite if destructive exploitation is to be avoided. It can grow out of a spiritual understanding of living nature. Daily work keeps the farmer in close touch with living and ensouled nature, with her individual creatures and the community at large. In the human being the life process becomes conscious and coherent. One participates in its pulsations. The earthly and cosmic surroundings bringing the potential life to its specific manifestations, each plant being a part of the immense life that spreads through the soil, that moves in the air, and pulsates through day and night, summer and winter. To meet this essential reality helps farmers fashion their work. This reality is the basis for ethical values. It is a dimension of a farmer's life that must not get drowned by actual or alleged economic necessities.
Extract: The Biodynamic Farm (Chapter 1) by H. Koepf
Koepf, H. (1989). The Biodynamic Farm: Agriculture in the Service of the Earth and Humanity. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York .
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