Biodynamic agriculture: a brief introduction

Due to extensive use of chemical substances like pesticides and chemical fertilizers, the agricultural system has been stricken by serious environmental pollution. Every country, especially industrialized ones, has been studying strategies to make the rural system self-sustainable, that is able to relay on natural processes and on renewable energetic resources, available in nature.

The target is an eco-compatible growth that allows to fulfill present needs without destroying our kids` biggest wealth: nature. Thus, agriculture is essential for human kind: it must give genuine food without polluting beyond giving income to farmers.

Biodynamic productions come from farms following principles given by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) during an agricultural course held in 1924 in Koberwitz, Poland. By means of these lessons, Steiner shifted to the rural world the antroposophic conception of the world by himself developed. According to this philosophic theory, life is, in every form, the meeting of matter and immaterial forces coming from cosmos. This process takes place in nature too, where leaves take cosmic energy by the heat of stars (the sun) and roots take mineral salts by the solidity of the soil. People attending the forum in Koberwitz, all of them expert farmers, elaborated those principles and applied them in their every day farm life. This way, biologic-dynamic agriculture was born and later it was called simply biodynamic agriculture. This kind of agriculture is based on concepts of cooperation between man and land and it must develop according to relations among material and immaterial components existing in the natural state of things.

Every cultural technique (cultivation of soil, sowing, fertilization, etc.) must follow cosmic forces (sun, moon, stars, planets) and terrestrial forces (water, air, mineral elements). The method to make soil and plants very receptive to those forces (dynamic action) gives priority to special composting techniques and biodynamic preparations which are sprayed on soil and plants.

Greenhouse Sprinkler Sprayer