THE BIO-DYNAMIC PREPARATIONS


A key feature of Biodynamic agriculture is that seed and fertility required by the farm is produced on the farm. The farm is a self generating system. Fertility is maintained by the use of crop rotations and the application of compost and manures that have been treated with specific preparations. Ideally, these preparations will be made on the farm.

For a production unit to be certified Bio-dynamic, in addition to the other requirements of the National Standard, prep.500 and compost preparations must be applied to the whole production area at least once per year. Bio-dynamic Compost Preparations 502 -507 are to be used to direct all fermentation processes in liquid manures and composts.

The Bio-dynamic Preparations are not fertilisers themselves but greatly assist the fertilising process. As the name suggests, these Preparations are designed to work directly with the dynamic biological processes and cycles which are the basis of soil fertility. As activators of life processes they only need to be used in very small amounts.

The Bio-dynamic Preparations activate soil and plants, develop soil structure and enhance the nutrient cycles. Farming practices need to support this process. The Bio-dynamic Preparations (numbered 500 to 507) are used in conjunction with established agricultural practices such as composting, sheet composting, manuring, crop and pasture rotations, tree planting, the integrated use of livestock and so on.

Preparation 500 specifically enlivens the soil, increasing the microflora, root exudation and availability of nutrients and trace elements via humus and not through soil water. Prep.500 promotes root growth, especially the fine root hairs. It develops humus formation, soil structure and water holding capacity.


UNFOLDING LIFE

by Dr. Manfred Klett

The compost and spray preparations are substances perceived by Rudolf Steiner on the foundation of the three stages of higher knowledge: imagination, inspiration, and intuition. The biodynamic preparations have their origin in spirit knowledge that reaches into the sphere of the etheric formative forces and further into those spiritual realms that create rhythm. They weave in time, shape processes in time and thereby initiate courses of events in the life sphere. Their origin guarantees their life-giving and creative powers so they may bring forth entities of wholeness.

The making of the preparations follows the principle: life evolves only from life, soul qualities descend only from the world of soul, and spiritual faculties originate from the world of the spirit alone. Rudolf Steiner puts the greatest emphasis on the need that each step in the making of the preparations is kept in the sphere of life. All life activities express themselves in rhythms.

The procedure of making all the preparations is embed­ded from beginning to end in the earth‑sun rhythm which establishes the course of day and year. In looking at the spray preparations, a further enhancement during the stirring process is the involvement of the individual human ego‑rhythm that expresses itself as an hour rhythm. The water into which the preparation is placed is stirred for one hour in a
rhythm that each person deter­mines for himself /herself, first stirring in one direction and then in the opposite direction. Rudolf Steiner put such great emphasis on hand stirring because it is a truly rhythmic process. A machine is not able to create rhythms due to the absence of an inner life being. The timing of applying the spray preparations is furthermore embedded in the daily and yearly rhythms.

The principle of holding a process within the realm of life is most obvious in the making and applying of the spray preparations: a combination of materials from nature, horn‑cow manure and horn‑silica are buried in the earth in winter and summer respectively. The resulting product received is a substance of the solid earth element. The solid earthly is transformed into the liquid state through rhythmic stirring in the water element and is then entrusted to the air element in fine droplets by spraying, in order to finally pass through the element of warmth and thus become activated in the etheric realm. The compost preparations are also continually kept in the realm of life during the entire process of making them. They unfold their radiating efficacy in direct contact with the organic compost and manure, regulating and harmonizing the process of breakdown and renewal. The manure thus undergoes a transformation of matter and composition of forces, becoming fully effective in the soil for the benefit of the earth.

The plant, in unfolding its life, is dependant upon forces that in themselves are living; meaning in which the spirit as force is directly active. In anthroposophy these forces are called etheric formative forces. It is these that form our human body, and with our thought life, we subconsciously live in these formative forces. The spiritual scientist, with his awakened, thinking consciousness, enters in his research the same world of etheric formative forces which make plant growth possible. He is able to communicate the results of his research to our normal consciousness, which is tied to our sense perception, by means of ideas; or he may transmute the results into a technique that corresponds to the essence of living nature.

This technique in the realm of life resides as high above pure mechanical physics as the technology of electromagnetism has its place below. In areas where plant growth is increasingly exposed to the forces of electromagnetism, either through radiation or through electrolytic dissociation of mineral fertilizer in the soil water, the plant seals itself off from the cosmos and tends to become sclerotic.  The etheric formative forces are in such cases too weak to counter the forces of sub-nature. All expressions of life, however, are based on being able to push back these forces.

The plant is an organism which is an entity structured into organs. This organism is an image of an organized energy field that may be recognized through the living thought life of the scientist of the spirit. The plant organism can solely form itself by drawing on forces which correspond to its own being, forces which can bring about a living whole. The biodynamic preparations were created to mediate such forces.

The plant which we perceive with our senses is formed within the field of tension of the etheric formative forces and the forces and substances of the earth. The plant is able to grow because it utilizes the forces of the etheric to push back those forces which are active in the mere physical of the earth, so that the plant developing in time can manifest its form in space.

The application of the preparations is always done in a concrete, spatial setting. In the case of the spray preparations, the prepared soil is sprayed prior to seeding, or the plant is sprayed directly during the different stages of growth respectively. The compost preparations reach the soil when the finished compost is spread. The whole sequence of applications is placed into a time-frame connected to the rhythms of day and year. In the sphere of life everything has its own time, and the effectiveness of the preparations is tuned to further this rhythmic measure of time.

The processes of making the preparations and applying the preparations, are an inseparable wholeness. The general tendency in our current scientific thinking is to develop technologies which disengage the living existence of nature from its cosmic origin and from the spirit of the human being. The effort of making and applying the preparations goes in the opposite direction. The preparations offer to the active person in agriculture the possibility to get involved in an activity in which the human being is able to creatively serve living nature in freedom. The preparations are, as it were, the means through which the active human being imprints his/ her individual ego- rhythm upon nature and establishes a harmony with the rhythms of the cosmos. One should strive not to separate the preparations from human being, who is their creator.

The nature and importance of the preparations is to be found on an entirely different plane to the sense perceptible, one which is governed not only by what we call the laws of nature. Their true meaning is revealed only to those who handle them in their daily work with an active perception and attentiveness and a meditatively deepened thinking. From the correct understanding we must build a consciousness to maintain the handling of, and the research into, the preparations within the very context which was established by the results of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual scientific work revealed in the Agricultural Course.

This is an extract from an article written in German by Dr. Manfred Klett, who is the head of the Agricultural Section within the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum in Dornach, . The translation was done by Heinz Grotzke and the editing by R. Le Lievre.