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Tillage
By Dr Manfred Klett
All agricultural work, and especially its heart, the arable work, rests upon three pillars. One pillar is soil cultivation, the second pillar is crop rotation, and the third is manuring. We have to be aware as farmers that the outside world is not completely different from us. Our body is a piece of the earth. We enter into Nature with our being though our work but also through our perception of her.
We work into the earth’s physical body through soil cultivation. By means of crop rotation, through plant cultivation we work into the life body of our farm. The animal kingdom forms the sentient body of the earth. In agriculture we work into this by animal husbandry and manuring.
What is the significance of soil cultivation? We work with physical implements into the physical body of the earth throughout the seasons. During winter we are not busy with cultivation, nature does this herself by the frost and crystallization forces. The farmer can stay at home by the fireside and leave nature to herself in this awakening time of the year for the earth. He needs look back over the events of the past year and gather all the impressions for the coming year. Unfortunately in modern farming we are busy the whole year through and do not come to the inner rest that is necessary at this time of the year. As the sun gradually rises in its daily arch and the earth warms, all arable farmers begin to be itchy. In the springtime, when the soil begins to dry, the farmer is anxious to do something. It is the time of year when one really needs to wake up to presence of mind and know how to do the right thing at the right time in the right way. This is the art that has to be performed when spring commences. The main urge at this time of year is to grab hold of the soil.
In all soil cultivation we guide death processes in the soil. In Spring we try to keep the earth open, so that rain can penetrate and the soil is able to breath. All life underneath the surface breathes in the same way as we do. Microbes and roots produce carbon dioxide which is a poison that has to be exhaled. It is heavier than air and therefore not easily expelled from the soil. When the soil surface is opened up airflow over the field draws out the carbon dioxide and at the same time oxygen can enter. We have to further this breathing process by springtime soil cultivations.
The main spring soil processes of decomposition of humus and guidance of the microbial activity continue on into the summer. This is a time when not much soil cultivation is carried out because plants are in full growth and cover the earth. At the end of summer the harvesting of the grain crops begins. What is the main process we have to consider from summer to Autumn in soil cultivation? There is stubble and many lignified roots in the soil. What has been alive from springtime throughout summer is now physically dead, organic matter. The soil itself has physically died down a little during summertime. All the organic matter has to be mixed up with the soil. The humus from springtime has been more or less transformed into this organic matter. Now we have to see how it transforms once again into humus. Humus is not a stage of decomposition, it is rather the creation of something new. In order for this to happen the sentient organization of the soil animal, especially the earthworm, controls the whole process of humus formation. Now all this can be furthered by soil cultivation. This is what we are doing by mulching. So mulching of the soil to incorporate roots and stubble is critical. The internalization and transformation of the organic matter happens on arable land through soil cultivation is what we call mulching.
We now go on to autumn and wintertime. The humus formation continues and it ripens in the soil in correspondence to the general process of ripening in nature. What are we doing in soil cultivation at this time of the year? When the outer life dies down we are allowed to interfere physically and even further this process of death by chaoticising and mineralizing the soil. This can be achieved by a deeper-reaching cultivation which includes the cultivation of the subsoil. It is the appropriate time of the year for ploughing. It is not the time to be concerned about any humus process but rather with the clay and silt minerals in the subsoil. Some people think that ploughing is of no use in bio-dynamic or organic farming, but this is a real error in my opinion, which arises because they are only concerned with living, not about dying. But one has to be aware that all soil cultivations are furthering dying processes, in order to provide new life.
I said that all soil cultivation involves mechanical means and works into the physical organism of the farm. Whoever has been involved in arable work knows that it is a real art. Nowadays people think that one day a machine will be invented that really makes it superfluous to think! If you look at the market you will see an enormous array of implements available for soil cultivation. But this perfect tool does not exist. You cannot entirely delegate your ego will and insight to an implement. It is possible to work in a completely wrong or entirely correct way with almost any tool. You, yourself, have to know whether it is the right time, the right soil condition and the correct handling of the tool. You, yourself, are the source of this knowledge and art, not the tool. The many mistakes in soil cultivation can only be overcome when people realize that it is an art. Soil cultivation, right from its origin, reveals the free, self-determining will of mankind. When we do this work during the year’s course, we have to be scientists and artists observing exactly what is going on in the soil and acting at the right time. Thus we can learn to combine science with art, which may lead eventually to a new intuition of the future, a rediscovery of the spirit in nature. This is a future goal. We cannot say that we can develop a new religion right away, but we can take the first step by developing science into an art; this is what we seek to do in bio-dynamic farming.
Extract from a lecture delivered by Dr Klett at Emerson College , East Sussex , January 5, 1990.
The lectures are published in the booklet: Dying and Becoming: Man’s path to a new communion with Nature. Published by International Bio-dynamic Initiative Group, St Mary’s,
Church St, Hartfield, East Sussex TN7 4AG, . ISBN: 1 870081 02 1.
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