May 2017

Biodynamic Social Farming and Gardening Conference

organised by the International Working Group or Social Therapy (STAG)

10th – 13th May 2017,

Emerson College, Forest Row, Sussex

This event, the first of its kind, had arisen out of a symposium forming part of a conference in Dornach in 2015. The symposium had been organised by the Sozial-therapeutische Arbeitsgruppe (STAG) on the theme of

*Production versus Therapy in Biodynamic Social Farms and Gardens’, and the organisers had become aware that, such is the growing importance on many levels of the mutually healing relationship between the land and human communities, a whole conference needed to be devoted to this subject. It had been agreed that such a conference should ideally take place in Britain, in view of the fact that – in contrast to the situation in Central Europe – what is generally known as biodynamic Social Farming’ is in this country not so much a movement as a collection of largely unrelated entities; and Paulamaria Blaxland-de Lange, who is a member of STAG, had agreed to organise the event at Emerson College.

The conference was attended by some 36 people, including several members of the German-speaking International Working Group for Social Therapy and many people actively engaged in biodynamic farming and / or horticultural work either in Camphill communities in Great Britain, Ireland and the USA or in other Steiner-based organisations such as the various centres of the Ruskin Mill Trust. Sonja Zausch, representing the Conference for Curative Education and Social Therapy in Dornach, was also present. Because of this great diversity, there was much wisdom in the organisers’ decision to give full space at the outset to enable each participant to describe the challenges, difficulties and opportunities inherent in his or her particular location.

After welcoming everyone, Paulamaria introduced the conference by speaking of three areas of loss or impoverishment in our time – namely, of soil, diversity and relationships – and then briefly referred to a number of individuals whose work has sought to remedy these deficiencies in these respective areas, specifically Prince Charles and Rachel Carson, Manfred Klett (who led a series of inspiring international conferences between 1987 and 1994 at Emerson College on biodynamic agriculture and its social

and cultural implications) and – from the Camphill movement – Hartmut von Jeetze and David Schwartz, who coined the term ‘radical gentleness’ as a means of charac-terising a particular gift borne by Central Europe. Hartwig Ehlers then proceeded to introduce the conference theme by sounding a thought which threaded throughout the confer-ence, namely the essential importance of the ‘genius loci’, of the potential inherent in any particular location. ‘Social farming’, he emphasised, cannot be characterised in terms of a general principle but lives in different ways wherever it is practised. He spoke of his own experience of growing up on his parents’ BD farm in post-war Germany. Initially the farm had employed many people, but with the advent of the “Wirtschaftswunder’ many left for jobs in industry. The shortfall was made up by emigrants and addicts who wanted to stay and live on the farm. At first it was difficult to employ them, but eventually they were able to contribute to its success (both socially and as a productive organism). Such a situation, he said, cannot easily be replicated – and yet there is a twofold need in our time both on the part of farms and of young people who lack adequate employment.

That same evening there was a full presentation by Derk klein Bramel, from Urtica De Vijfsprong in Holland, on the theme of ‘What can Social Therapy learn from Biodynamic Agriculture?’ Derk began by describing a 24-year-old woman suffering from anorexia, who had found transformation at Urtica through her dedicated work with tomato plants in the greenhouse, which by the end of her first year were already taller than she was. She had come to feel totally at one with the plant world around her, with the job she was doing, with the soil and with the whole atmosphere of the place, enabling her to feel that she really belonged there.

Derk went on to describe the particular context within which Rudolf Steiner had given the Agriculture Course in 1924 and indicated that it was a reaction or answer to an agriculture that was becoming more and more analytical. He then spoke about some key aspects of BD agriculture that are of particular relevance when working with the individual needs of human beings, all of which in one way or another enhance the dynamic interplay between point and circle, between the individual and the whole, between the Earth and the cosmos. (Examples included the concept of the BD farm individuality and the transformative work of compost and the preparations.)