Agriculture - A Course of Eight Lectures by Rudolf Steiner.pdf

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AGRICULTURE
A Course of Eight Lectures by
RUDOLF STEINER, Ph.D.
Given at Koberwitz, Silesia, 7 th to 16 th June, 1924
English Translation by GEORGE ADAMS, M.A.
Preface by EHRENFRIED PFEIFFER, M.D. (HON.)
BIO-DYNAMIC AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION RUDOLF STEINER
HOUSE 15 PARK ROAD, LONDON, N.W.1
Revised Edition 1958
Translated from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer and
published by permission of the
R UDOLF S TEINER -N ACHLASSVERWALTUNG , D ORNACH , S WITZERLAND
Copyright 1958 by Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland Printed in
Great Britain by Wilding & Son Ltd., Shrewsbury Color Plates by Silk & Terry Ltd.,
Birmingham 3
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The Agriculture Course
CONTENTS
P REFACE
L ECTURE 1
L ECTURE 2
L ECTURE 3
A DDRESS BY D R . S TEINER
L ECTURE 4
D ISCUSSION
L ECTURE 5
D ISCUSSION
L ECTURE 6
D ISCUSSION
L ECTURE 7
L ECTURE 8
D ISCUSSION
S UPPLEMENT
I NDEX
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The Agriculture Course
Preface
BY EHRENFRIED PFEIFFER, M.D.(HON.)
In 1922/23 Ernst Stegemann and a group of other farmers went to ask Rudolf Steiner's advice
about the increasing degeneration they had noticed in seed-strains and in many cultivated
plants. What can be done to check this decline and to improve the quality of seed and nutrition?
That was their question.
They brought to his attention such salient facts as the following: Crops of lucerne used
commonly to be grown in the same field for as many as thirty years on end. The thirty years
dwindled to nine, then to seven. Then the day came when it was considered quite an
achievement to keep this crop growing in the same spot for even four or five years. Farmers used
to be able to seed new crops year after year from their own rye, wheat, oats and barley. Now they
were finding that they had to resort to new strains of seed every few years. New strains were
being produced in bewildering pro’fusion, only to disappear from the scene again in short order.
A second group went to Dr. Steiner in concern at the increase in animal diseases, with
problems of sterility and the widespread foot-and-mouth disease high on the list. Among those
in this group were the veterinarian Dr. Joseph Werr, the physician Dr. Eugen Kolisko, and
members of the staff of the newly established Weleda, the pharmaceutical manufacturing
enterprise.
Count Carl von Keyserlingk brought problems from still another quarter. Then Dr.
Wachsmuth and the present writer went to Dr. Steiner with questions dealing particularly with
the etheric nature of plants, and with formative forces in general. In reply to a question about
plant diseases, Dr. Steiner told the writer that plants themselves could never be diseased in a
primary sense, “since they are the products of a healthy etheric world.” They suffer rather from
diseased conditions in their environment, especially in the soil; the causes of so-called plant
diseases should be sought there. Ernst Stegemann was given special indications as to the point of
view from which a farmer could approach his task, and was shown some first steps in the
breeding of new plant types as a first impetus towards the subsequent establishment of the
biological-dynamic movement.
In 1923 Rudolf Steiner described for the first time how to make the bio-dynamic compost
preparations, simply giving the recipe without any sort of explanation — just “do this and then
that.” Dr. Wachsmuth and I then proceeded to make the first batch of preparation 500. This was
then buried in the garden of the “Sonnenhof” in Arlesheim, Switzerland. The momentous day
came in the early summer of 1924 when this first lot of 500 was dug up again in the presence of
Dr. Steiner, Dr. Wegman, Dr. Wachsmuth, a few other co-workers and myself. It was a sunny
afternoon. We began digging at the spot where memory, aided by a few landmarks, prompted us
to search. We dug on and on. The realer will understand that a good deal more sweating was
done over the waste of Dr. Steiner's time than over the strenuousness of the labour. Finally he
became impatient and turned to leave for a five o'clock appointment at his studio. The spade
grated on the first cowhorn in the very nick of time.
Dr. Steiner turned back, called for a pail of water, and proceeded to show us how to
apportion the horn's contents to the water, and the correct way of stirring it. As the author's
walking-stick was the only stirring implement at hand, it was pressed into service. Rudolf
Steiner was particularly concerned with demonstrating the energetic stirring, the forming of a
funnel or crater, and the rapid changing of direction to make a whirlpool. Nothing was said
about the possibility of stirring with the hand or with a birch-whisk. Brief directions followed as
to how the preparation was to be sprayed when the stirring was finished. Dr. Steiner then
indicated with a motion of his hand over the garden how large an area the available spray would
cover. Such was the momentous occasion marking the birth-hour of a world-wide agricultural
movement.
What impressed me at the time, and still gives one much to think about, was how these
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step-by-step developments illustrate Dr. Steiner's practical way of working. He never proceeded
from preconceived abstract dogma, but always dealt with the concrete given facts of the
situation. There was such germinal potency in his indications that a few sentences or a short
paragraph often sufficed to create the foundation for a farmer's or scientist's whole life-work; the
agricultural course is full of such instances. A study of his indications can therefore scarcely be
thorough enough. One does not have to try to puzzle them out, but can simply follow them to the
letter.
Dr. Steiner once said, with an understanding smile, in another, very grave situation, that
there were two types of people engaged in anthroposophical work: the older ones, who
understood everything, but did nothing with it, and the younger ones, who understood only
partially or not at all, but immediately put suggestions into practice. We obviously trod the
younger path in the agricultural movement, which did all its learning in the hard school of
experience. Only now does the total picture of the new impulse given by Rudolf Steiner to
agriculture stand clearly before us, even though we still have far to go to exhaust all its
possibilities. Accomplishments to date are merely the first step. Every day brings new experience
and opens new perspectives.
* * *
Shortly before 1924, Count Keyserlingk set to work in deal earnest to persuade Dr. Steiner
to give an agricultural course. As Dr. Steiner was already overwhelmed with work, tours and
lectures, he put off his decision from week to week. The undaunted Count then dispatched his
nephew to Dornach, with orders to camp on Dr. Steiner's doorstep and refuse to leave without a
definite commitment for the course. This was finally given.
The agricultural course was held from June 7 to 16, 1924, in the hospitable home of Count
and Countess Keyserlingk at Koberwitz, near Breslau. It was followed by further consultations
and lectures in Breslau, among them the famous “Address to Youth.” I myself had to forgo
attendance at the course, as Dr. Steiner had asked me to stay at home to help take care of
someone who was seriously ill. “I'll write and tell you what goes on at the course,” Dr. Steiner
said by way of solace. He never did get round to writing, no doubt because of the heavy demands
on him; this was understood and regretfully accepted. On his return to Dornach, however, there
was an opportunity for discussing the general situation. When I asked him whether the new
methods should be started on an experimental basis, he replied: “The most important thing is to
make the benefits of our agricultural preparations available to the largest possible areas over the
entire earth, so that the earth may be healed and the nutritive quality of its produce improved in
every respect. That should be our first objective. The experiments can come later.” He obviously
thought that the proposed methods should be applied at once.
This can be understood against the background of a conversation I had with Dr. Steiner en
route from Stuttgart to Dornach shortly before the agricultural course was given. He had been
speaking of the need for a deepening of esoteric life, and in this connection mentioned certain
faults typically found in spiritual movements. I then asked, “How can it happen that the spiritual
impulse, and especially the inner schooling, for which you are constantly providing stimulus and
guidance bear so little fruit? Why do the people concerned give so little evidence of spiritual
experience, in spite of all their efforts? Why, worst of all, is the will for action, for the carrying
out of these spiritual impulses, so weak?” I was particularly anxious to get an answer to the
question as to how one could build a bridge to active participation and the carrying out of
spiritual intentions without being pulled off the right path by personal ambition, illusions and
petty jealousies; for, these were the negative qualities Rudolf Steiner had named as the main
inner hindrances. Then came the thought-provoking and surprising answer: “This is a problem
of nutrition. Nutrition as it is to-day does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the
spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food
plants no longer contain the forces people need for this.”
A nutritional problem which, if solved, would enable the spirit to become manifest and
realise itself in human beings! With this as a background, one can understand why Dr. Steiner
said that “the benefits of the bio-dynamic compost preparations should be made available as
quickly as possible to the largest possible areas of the entire earth, for the earth's healing.”
This puts the Koberwitz agricultural course in proper perspective as an introduction to
understanding spiritual, cosmic forces and making them effective again in the plant world.
In discussing ways and means of propagating the methods, Dr. Steiner said also that the
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good effects of the preparations and of the whole method itself were “for everybody, for all
farmers” — in other words, not intended to be the special privilege of a small, select group. This
needs to be the more emphasised in view of the fact that admission to the course was limited to
farmers, gardeners and scientists who had both practical experience and a spiritual’scientific,
anthroposophical background. The latter is essential to understanding and evaluating what
Rudolf Steiner set forth, but the bio-dynamic method can be applied by any farmer. It is
important to point this out, for later on many people came to believe that only anthroposophists
can practise the bio-dynamic method. On the other hand, it is certainly true that a grasp of bio-
dynamic practices gradually opens up a wholly new perspective on the world, and that the
practitioner acquires and applies a kind of judgment in dealing with biological — i.e. living —
processes and facts which is different from that of a more materialistic chemical farmer; he
follows nature's dynamic play of forces with a greater degree of interest and awareness. But it is
also true that there is a considerable difference between mere application of the method and
creative participation in the work. From the first, actual practice has been closely bound up with
the work of the spiritual centre of the movement, the Natural Science Section of the Goetheanum
at Dornach. This was to be the source, the creative, fructifying spiritual element; while the
practical workers brought back their results and their questions.
The name, “Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Method,” did not originate with Dr. Steiner, but with
the experimental circle concerned with the practical application of the new direction of thought.
In the Agricultural Course, which was attended by some sixty persons, Rudolf Steiner set
forth the basic new way of thinking about the relationship of earth and soil to the formative
forces of the etheric, astral and ego activity of nature. He pointed out particularly how the health
of soil, plants and animals depends upon bringing nature into connection again with the cosmic
creative, shaping forces. The practical method he gave for treating soil, manure and compost,
and especially for making the bio-dynamic compost preparations, was intended above all to
serve the purpose of reanimating the natural forces which in nature and in modern agriculture
were on the wane. “This must be achieved in actual practice,” Rudolf Steiner told me. He showed
how much it meant to him to have the School of Spiritual Science going hand in hand with real-
life practicality when he spoke on another occasion of wanting to have teachers at the School
alternate a few years of teaching (three years was the period mentioned) with a subsequent
period of three years spent in work outside, so that by this alternation they would never get out
of touch with the conditions and challenges of real life.
The circle of those who had been inspired by the agricultural course and were now working
both practically and scientifically at this task kept on growing; one thinks at once of Guenther
Wachsmuth, Count Keyserlingk, Ernst Stegemann, Erhard Bartsch, Franz Dreidax, Immanuel
Vögele, M. K. Schwarz, Nikolaus Remer, Franz Rulni, Ernst Jakobi, Otto Eckstein, Hans Heinze,
and of many others who came into the movement with the passing of time, including Dr. Werr,
the first veterinarian. The bio-dynamic movement developed out of the co-operation of practical
workers with the Natural Science Section of the Goetheanum. Before long it had spread to
Austria, Switzerland, Italy, England, France, the north-European countries and the United
States. To-day no part of the world is without active collaborators in this enterprise.
* * *
The bio-dynamic school of thought and a chemically-minded agricultural thinking
confronted one another from opposite points of the compass at the time the agricultural course
was held. The latter school is based essentially on the views of Justus von Liebig. It attributes the
fact that plants take up substances from the soil solely to the so-called “nutrient-need” of the
plant. The one-sided chemical fertiliser theory that thinks of plant needs in terms of nitrogen-
phosphates-potassium-calcium, originated in this view, and the theory still dominates orthodox
scientific agricultural thinking to-day. But it does Liebig an injustice. He himself expressed
doubt as to whether the “N-P-K” theory should be applied to all soils. Deficiency symptoms were
more apparent in soils poor in humus than in those amply supplied with it. The following
quotation makes one suspect that Liebig was by no means the hardened materialist that his
followers make him out to be. He wrote: “Inorganic forces breed only inorganic substances.
Through a higher force at work in living bodies, of which inorganic forces are merely the
servants, substances come into being which are endowed with vital qualities and totally different
from the crystal.” And further: “The cosmic conditions necessary for the existence of plants are
the warmth and light of the sun.” Rudolf Steiner gave the key to these “higher forces at work in
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