“Rudolf Steiner” in Relation to Biodynamics

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, architect, esotericist, educator and social thinker born in the early 1861 and died in the early 1925. Steiner achieved initial acknowledgment as a cultural philosopher and literary reviewer. After the First World War was over, Steiner strived to find realistic demonstrations of his philosophy in collaboration with educationalists, farmers, medical doctors and other fields. He instituted biodynamic agriculture, Waldorf education and anthroposophical medicine among other numerous biodynamics aspects.

Biodynamics or biodynamic agriculture encompasses a sustainable and ecological farming technique that comprise of many thoughts of organic farming. In the year 1924, an assembly of farmers anxious about the prospect of farming requested Steiner' to assist them. Steiner acted in response with a series of lectures about agriculture. This formed the foundation of biodynamic agriculture, which is now widely practiced all through much of North America, Europe and Australasia. A vital concept of the lectures was to “personalize" the ranch or farm by carrying no or a small number of external materials for use on the farm. However, the farmers generated all needed resources such as animal feed, manure or fertilizer from within and referred to it as “farm organism”.

There were various characteristics of biodynamic agriculture moved by the lectures given by Steiner. This includes the timing of activities, for instance, planting in accordance with the patterns of the planets or moon’s movement. This must have been developed in precise ways, to compost piles, plants and soil with the objective of appealing to non-physical life forms and essential forces. Steiner further advocated for the farmers to scientifically verify the suggestions that he had put across in the lectures since he had not verified.

In the earlier years of the twentieth century, adoption of conventional agriculture gained momentum with the use of nitrogen based inorganic fertilizers. These were manufactured through condensation of nitrogen from the air and consequently applying it to the fields. Steiner believed this chemical farming was detrimental to the environment and clearly stated that application of chemical fertilizers is an action that must be stopped. This was because the crops grown on the field after a period of time ended up losing their nutritional values as a completely general law. Steiner was certain that chemical farming through the use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers would lead to the degradation in the food quality produced.

Steiner also believed this was not only because of the biological or chemical nature relating to the materials involved. He believed that it was also caused by the divine inadequacies in the entire chemical move towards farming. Steiner believed in monism, which considered the mutually exclusive material and spiritual nature of each and everything in the world. Steiner believed that there is a sharp difference between living and dead matter, thus synthetic nutrients were very much different from the living microbial made nutrients. The name " biodynamic” or “biologically dynamic" was carried forward by Steiner's supporters. The core aspect of biodynamics hold that, farm in its entirety is viewed as an organism and consequently ought to be a bunged self-nourishing organism, which the measures nourish. Ailment of organisms is not tackled in isolation since it is an indicator of problems in the whole life form. Rudolf Steiner is applauded for establishing various aspects of biodynamics that have proved to be very useful to educationalists, farmers and medical doctors at large.