Circular 102 Winter 2012/13
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Circular 102 Winter 2012/13 Dear readers, As protagonists in the biodynamic movement we are faced with a three-fold challenge: 1. We want to have good farms and to offer good produce. 2. We want to nurture an inner culture of biodynamics. 3. We want get involved in the great questions of our times such as gene technology, climate change, famine. It was the Agricultural Conference 2011 – “From burning Issues to Beacons of Light” – which made this three-fold challenge clearly visible. What is the essence of the biodynamic impulse? The suggestion for the following year was to examine this question individually and together we worked on it for the Agricultural Conference 2012. The result may be formulated as: the essence of the biodynamic impulse expresses itself through the inner attitude with which we connect inner and outer and also man and nature. It may be summarised in four words: Honesty, openness, co-operation and initiative. Honesty we learn from the soil. Openness we learn from the plants. Co-operation we learn from the animals. Initiative can only come from the human being. Now, in this year and in the coming agricultural conference with the title “Alliances for the Earth” it comes down to seeking to work together with other committed contemporaries. Thus the focus is directed towards the third challenge of 2011. However, the outward path – with alliances – also calls for the inward path. In a preparatory workshop with the laboratory leaders, which we ran with Nicanor Perlas, this became clearly obvious. The call from the world, which I hear, must be taken into my inner life, into the inner dialogue with the question: can I change something in the world without being ready to change something in myself? The creative moment, which allows the alliance to become more than a mere marriage of convenience, springs from the possibility of awakening through the everyday ego to the higher ego, and of bringing this moment as potential for the future into the community of the alliance. Thus we are at the second challenge. And this relationship of outer and inner, stretched really far in both directions, - in the direction of general fellowship with contemporaries and of the most individual ego qualities – needs the solid and concrete ground of our practical farming activity. For this reason the laboratories at the coming conference are related practical themes. Thus, they will do justice to the first challenge. Thus, with the forthcoming conference we will come to a kind of synthesis and the space for creativity which was opened up by the question of the burning issues will find a certain closure. We are all the more glad to be able to convey in this circular our early thoughts on a new direction to work in. We wish you a time of contemplation at Christmas and a Happy New Year! Ueli Hurter Jean-Michel Florin Thomas Lüthi 2 CONTENTS Editorial.............................................................................................................................1 On the theme of the year 2012/13 Alliances for the Earth Jean-Michel Florin...............................................................................................................5 Forming Alliances: the Call of the World for inner Development Ambra Sedlmayr and Jean-Michel Florin..............................................................................8 New theme of the year Heading towards a new Theme of the Year Ueli Hurter........................................................................................................................11 The Child of Europe Ueli Hurter........................................................................................................................14 Reports from around the world Report on Italy Sabrina Menestrina...........................................................................................................17 Report from China Thomas Lüthi....................................................................................................................19 From the work of the Section Is the international biodynamic movement a social organism? Ueli Hurter........................................................................................................................20 International Biodynamic Council – IBDC Thomas Lüthi....................................................................................................................23 Sending off the first biodynamic Ambassador Ambra Sedlmayr................................................................................................................24 The Landscape Project Jean-Michel Florin.............................................................................................................24 The Vine project Jean-Michel Florin.............................................................................................................26 The Nutrition Project Jean-Michel Florin.............................................................................................................28 Report of the Excursions and Meeting of the Circle of Representatives in South Tirol from 30th October to 3rd November 2012 Jean-Michel Florin.............................................................................................................29 Agenda............................................................................................................................33 3 4 On the theme of the year 2012/13 Alliances for the Earth Jean-Michel Florin Our world seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into crises. What is a crisis? If one casts one’s gaze towards nature, a crisis can be observed wherever something new is meant to come about. For instance, the caterpillar of the butterfly goes through a crisis when it pupates, when its body becomes a formless milky substance. How can the imago come about from that? Can the current crises lead to a metamorphosis of our society? And how can we support this metamorphosis? If we attempt to find a common denominator for the current crises, we ascertain that they all have to do with a particular view of the world: the earth, plants, animals and, in the meanwhile, the human being as well have been made into objects, into things. We could talk about an “objectification of the world”. For the past five hundred years science has limited itself to the measurable and has made the immeasurable measurable or else ignored it; for example, the relationship between farmers and their livestock, which is not measurable but is perceivable, has been ignored and pushed aside as unimportant. Thus industrial agriculture could be developed (see the article “The Secret of Relationships” in Circular 101, summer 2012). This development has its significance for human evolution: it has helped us to free ourselves from the narrow bonds and traditions into which we are born. It has helped people to assert themselves as a personality, as an ego. The question which arises from the crisis of individuals detaching themselves from the world is: how can I make a new connection with the world in a conscious and free way? This is the task of the consciousness soul. The objectification of the world and all creatures went a stage further in the last century and in this one; with the progressive commoditisation everything is degraded into a commodity. The whole world is for sale; most recently, even plots of terrain on the moon! This commoditisation is the source of a lot of the problems of today, which affect agriculture world-wide, especially in the poorer countries: • The land question: land is made into a commodity. There are companies and governments, which buy huge areas of farming land in other countries and through their property rights cut back access to land more and more. This increases the number of landless farmers or of young people, who have difficulty finding a piece of land to farm and for their livelihoods. • Common property (water, seed,..) is turned increasingly into commodities, i.e. privatised. • Labour is turned into a commodity (and thereby the human being too); and it is always too expensive for the employers. Agriculture would have a lot of work places to offer, but people cannot and do not want to pay for them. The number of the unemployed is rising accordingly and speaks its own language. • Likewise money is degraded to a commodity so that money can be earned with 5 money. The gap between poor and super rich is getting wider and wider. • Food has not only become a commodity, but an object of speculation, which is the cause of food scarcity crises and famine. • A further current example is the transformation of landscape into a commodity. At present, the economic value of areas of nature and landscapes is being calculated, and, in fact, it is in the belief that they are better able to protect them, when they know that nature provides its services worth millions of dollars free of charge. Is it like that? Actually it is not, for thereby the unique quality of each area of nature is reduced to a number. If people want to destroy some part of nature, this can be replaced by another with the same economic value. In the process the uniqueness of each landscape is overlooked: exactly the opposite of what we as biodynamic farmers are striving to develop, namely the creation of an individual farm organism. Whoever has enough money can have possessions and thus hinder other people from accessing the fundamentals of life. Since we live in a time of objectification, ‘having’ is more important than ‘being’ and therefore