Biodynamic Farmers in Ireland. Transforming Society Through Purity, Solitude and Bearing Witness?
Naoimh McMahon
Abstract
The organic movement is hailed as a way of transforming industrial agriculture making it more ecologically sensitive. This paper explores, from a sociology of knowledge perspective, how biodynamic farmers' understandings are the basis for influencing a wider population. I argue that their relationship to their farming and ‘Others’ resembles a form of religious life defined by asceticism, repetition, sacrifice, and an emphasis on spiritualism and purity. Their reserved relationships with the outside world, particularly in communicating their ideas on agriculture meanwhile recall the search for solitude of religious hermits. They reject a strategy of direct proselytising as attempting to persuade may involve compromises, it would mean revealing their difference and alienating themselves further from the wider community, and some of them question their ability to influence people and wider systems. On one level they want to maintain the purity of their ideals and farming practices, on another, they don't want to be made to feel too different. They take on the role of trying to change the wider agricultural system through example and ‘bearing witness’ to the ideas of biodynamics.