From seeds to bananas
The Section’s activities focus on developing the quality of biodynamic agriculture, making it more visible and on training the younger generation.
The UN is predicting that in 60 years’ time soils will have become depleted and useless for farming purposes. For more than ninety years, biodynamic agriculture has been looking for ways of bringing life to farming and to its social aspects, which requires the ongoing study of the basics, of ways of working and of concrete activities. Extending the Section team to nine co-workers (the equivalent to 6 full-time positions) allows us to work on a broader basis. The following is a selection of themes we are addressing:
• The sensitive question of «biodynamic farming and hybrid varieties» will be worked on and discussed with everyone involved at a specialist conference.
• Demeter has developed and introduced a peer-to-peer accreditation process for biodynamic consultants
• The Living Farms research project uses short videos, publications and events to explore the potential of biodynamic places and inspire a future-viable agriculture through practical examples.
• After viticulture, there is now a growing demand for Demeter bananas, a development that makes it necessary to establish criteria for a biodynamic plantation culture.
• Work has started on a new edition of Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course (GA 327) for its hundredth anniversary in 2024.
• Nutritional scientists and practitioners are developing criteria for a quality diet based on conscious awareness of the processes involved in bringing the food from the field to the table.
The spirit as the all-uniting source
Strengthening our activities towards the outside requires a relationship to the spirit as the source that unites the different approaches – which is one of the reasons why the 2020 Agriculture Conference will be devoted to the question of «Finding the Spirit in Agriculture».