Considera

A GUIDE TO ORGANIC AND BIODYNAMIC CERTIFICATION


Tom Petherick
February 15, 2016

Inspector, farmer and author Tom Petherick joins us a regular contributor. In his first post he explores the benefits of Biodynamic farming, highlighting some of the practical considerations of certification, the ‘preps’ and ‘sprays’.

There is something properly satisfying about working land that is certified organic, and in my case biodynamic too. It is not just the stamp of approval and the level of authenticity that comes with it, there is more to it than that. It has to do with being part of a network of people who really believe that being organic and even biodynamic matters.

I am the author of a blog/authority site called tomdigsthis, from where I run courses that I teach on my farm and online courses about how to grow, garden, farm, forage, connect with the land and work with biodynamics. I am also an organic and biodynamic farm inspector.

The gags about looking for weapons of mass destruction and being both poacher and gamekeeper keep coming and I love it. What it boils down to is this: I inspect organic and biodynamic farms and horticultural holdings for compliance to Demeter International Standards on behalf of the Biodynamic Association who are the certification body. My own 4.5 hectare farm in South Devon is also certified biodynamic and organic under the same scheme.

Far from being some nightmare scene in which I turn up, shake the place down and withdraw licenses for fun, a day or half a day spent on one of these farms is almost always an enlightening and enjoyable experience, for both parties, I hope.

It involves some paperwork of course but beyond that it means a farm walk, will likely involve a good discussion about the year that has gone and the one that lies ahead, how the rotations are working, livestock breeds, pest and disease problems, successes or failures with certain crops – it could be anything. In most cases I leave feeling stimulated and informed. And the farmer gets another year of certification under his or her belt.

All this endless jargon like compliance, certification, standards that sounds like it is associated with form-filling, admin and hours of drudgery is the last thing we want to face when all we need is to be getting on with farming and growing. What it really amounts to, for the sake of a single, annual inspection is that you can put a ‘Certified Organic’ label on your produce after a two-year conversion period and the same for biodynamic after three years. Given that your farming practice is sure to meet the requirements anyway, that is all there is to it.

In a world where people care ever more about the provenance of their food and what is in it, the added value in certification is immense. Not just in the potential premium available for the product but for the land, the brand and the whole business ethos. It defines who you are and what your beliefs are.

As a certification body Demeter is the oldest and only international scheme in the world. 5,000 farms and 150,000 hectares are covered in more than 50 countries. Germany accounts for more that half of this hectarage. In its function Demeter is not that different from other certification bodies that operate in Europe and further afield. Except it is the only one that offers biodynamic certification. That sets it apart.

That biodynamics should have its own set of standards (to which farms must comply) is remarkable in itself. The whole purpose of biodynamic agriculture, as laid down by Rudolf Steiner, is to produce food that can help us find the will to develop our spiritual lives. Biodynamic certification requires that the farm receive both the biodynamic compost preparations and the two field sprays, the formulae for which were given by Steiner in his original ‘Agriculture Course’ in 1924.

BD500 is a preparation made of pure cow dung that has fermented underground in a cow horn from October to March. This is the period when the soil is most active and through the receptive nature of the horn growth energies are taken into the manure. BD500 is sprayed on the soil at the start of and during the growing season to enhance the microbiological activity of the soil. BD501 is made of ground quartz crystal that is also packed into a horn and buried for the summer months. This spray facilitates the uptake of light and is sprayed on the plants, also during the growing season.

The six compost preparations are made from yarrow, dandelion, nettle, oak bark, chamomile and valerian. These, like the horn preparations, spend time fermenting in animal body parts, except for nettle and valerian. After this they are ready for use in the compost heap in small quantities as activators and to aid with in the stabilization of the break down process. They also bring specific connections to the inner and outer planets, like the two horn preparations.

Ultimately the purpose of the sprays and the compost preparations is to bring our activities in the garden and on the farm in line with the work of the wider cosmos, both seen and unseen.

This side of biodynamics is less recognised these days because fewer people come to it through Anthroposophy, the name given to the approach to life and spirituality advocated by Steiner. They come to it for other reasons. It may be all that is happening in the world of biodynamic wine, possibly an interest in following the biodynamic planting calendar (a post-Steiner development) or it might be that they recognise what James Lovelock, Bill Mollison and Steiner all saw– the earth as a living, self-sustaining organism. It could simply be that Demeter products tend to be of a very high quality.

I have been practicing biodynamics for 10 years. In that time I have applied the sprays every year and treated all my compost heaps with the compost ‘preps’ to comply with standards. I keep cows and I put their manure in the horns of cows that once lived. I bury them. I put a pinch of the product in a barrel of water and I stir it back and forth for an hour to create vortex after vortex before spraying it on the land. I am very aware that my farm and garden are at all times under the influence of the wider environment.

A Beginners Guide to Biodynamic Farming

Tom PetherickMarch 21, 2016

In the second in a new series looking at Biodynamic Farming regular Indie Farmer contributor Tom Petherick answers some of the questions surrounding biodynamics.

New entrants into farming and horticulture, particularly those interested in organic production systems, are likely to encounter biodynamics at some point. Curiously this unusual but now more widely recognised and popular form of organic cultivation, complete with its own certification body and set of standards, remains a source of mystery to many people.

Why is this? Over nearly ten years of having Demeter certification on my land (refer to my last blog post for IF) and therefore being part of the biodynamic community, with the last five of those as an inspector, I have come to understand some things, two of which stand out.

Can the unseen, the unexplained and a world of ‘elemental beings’ be reason enough for us to stuff manure into the horns of dead cows, chamomile flowers into their intestines and the filed-off bark of oak trees into hollowed out skulls?

The first is that some of us have limited capacity to bring the elemental world into our lives. It is a step too far. Empirical science is where we prefer to dwell even though it is nature we are dealing with. But what is nature if not one giant, largely unexplained miracle? Let’s be honest: we live on a planet floating in space and anyone who tells you they know what is going on is making it up.

Can the unseen, the unexplained and a world of ‘elemental beings’ be reason enough for us to stuff manure into the horns of dead cows, chamomile flowers into their intestines and the filed-off bark of oak trees into hollowed out skulls? What drives us to follow the word of one man, Rudolf Steiner, who gave one set of lectures on a type of organic agriculture that later became known as biodynamics. Even he said it would be tough for his followers to get to grips with the elemental world, yet it is an essential part of understanding biodynamics.

This leads me on to the second. Surely we could not possibly believe in nor do these things unless we felt or knew that they were having an effect. If we did them without asking why, we would merely be followers of a cult. A simple case of ‘Steiner said’…. so we must do it.

Except Steiner’s work in bringing forward the various preparation plants, some to be fermented in animal body parts and some not, was quite clearly based on science. It was not, as many believe, a random selection of recommendations. I will explain what I mean and go through the preparations and what they are next time.

So why do we do all this? For my part I do not have an Anthroposophical background and when I began farming biodynamically had no ties to anything that suggested I had to do this. I wanted to try it. As of today I am bound to use the preparations by my certification status.

Away from the endless unanswered questions that have traditionally surrounded biodynamics, a recent statistic reveals that Demeter products rank in the top 50 brands in Germany, higher even than that deliciously goopy milk chocolate ‘Milka’, in its lavender coloured packet. This means that the product is good, as I have also discovered for myself as a consumer.

As a grower I can vouch for better keeping qualities and improved flavour in some crops, a general increase in soil fertility, high levels of seed viability and an overall sense that the garden/farm has (and this is another tricky area) a feeling of wholeness or togetherness about it. It may be something akin to the old saying that the best fertilizer is the farmer’s shadow, which I have always imagined to refer to the idea that a farm is likely to be in good heart if the farmer is in touch with what is going on across the land.

All this comes through the use of the preparations. It does not happen on its own or through meditation, prayer or anything else. If you apply these substances, preferably made on your own farm or in your garden, you may expect to see and feel change.

A way to try and understand biodynamics for a lot of people has often been through the use of the biodynamic planting calendar. There are a number of these available, the most popular being the one developed over many years of trials by the late Maria Thun, a German biodynamic farmer, and now compiled by her son Matthias. But if you think that using the calendar counts as practicing biodynamics you are mistaken.

I write this on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week and the day of Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the way strewn with palm leaves as signs of peace and homage. What followed was a pretty chaotic few days to say the least.

In the Thun calendar Good Friday and Easter Saturday are marked as ‘no work’ days. In her book ‘The Biodynamic Year’ Thun writes that plant trials consistently show that these two days are best written off because germination, plant growth and yields are poor.

She says: ‘However we ponder this question we always come back to the conviction that the cosmic event at Golgotha penetrated and imbued the earth and that plants annually participate in this’.

‘Spiritual Science’ said Steiner about biodynamics. Enough said.