‘Sustainable agriculture is copied from nature.’
‘Ten percent of Europe's agricultural land is farmed organically – and the trend is upwards.’
‘In the farm organism, ruminants play a central role.’
Back to the future – to circular agriculture
The ideal farm is the starting point for this article by Alfred Schädeli. What does this have to do with organic and biodynamic agriculture? Find out about the advantages of the agricultural circular economy here. It has always been the basis of biodynamic farming.
Text: Alfred Schädeli, farmer, president of the Association for Biodynamic Agriculture
When my grandchildren play at being farmers, they take a cow, then a second and a third. Then the bull, a pig, a cockerel and a few chickens, a goat, a sheep, the farmer with a pitchfork and maybe a horse. And don't forget the tractor, model Fendt, with tipping trailer, and the slurry tanker. A combine harvester is also needed. This idyll is becoming increasingly rare in real agriculture. But in the imagination of children, as well as in that of us adults, it lives on.
The ideal farm
On the ideal farm, as we imagine it, cows, goats and sheep graze in the pastures, meadows are mowed and hay is prepared to be stored in the barn for the winter. The farming folk have a close relationship with their livestock, caring for them day in, day out, and using their dung as a valuable fertiliser on the fields, where they grow grain, potatoes and vegetables. They spread the straw from the cornfield in the stable to provide the animals with a warm, dry bed in winter. They feed the chickens the grains that are too small and the pigs the kitchen leftovers, vegetable field scraps and whey from the cheese dairy.
Of course, not every idyll deserves to be preserved. Our world is changing, and in many cases it is appropriate to break with tradition and find new solutions for the future. But some old traditions have stood the test of time.
The circular economy delivers
A wonderful old tradition is the circular economy. It is important to preserve it as a basic idea and to develop it into a sustainable form for the future. The skilful interweaving of crop and livestock farming creates a solid foundation for sustainable food production that is equal to the challenges of our time. In our country, it is just as much in retreat as it is everywhere else in the world. But there is also hope, a countermovement that recognises the value of diverse enterprises.
Plants and animals form soil
Sustainable agriculture is modelled on nature and builds on it. In nature, soil, plants and animals are in close interaction. Wherever there is an opportunity on earth, soil is quickly formed, plants grow and animals settle. This applies on both a small and a large scale. If even the smallest amount of sand and dust collects in a crevice in the mountains or between the cobblestones of a car park, moss, algae, plants, worms and insects will appear immediately. Fertile soil is created. All the vegetation on our planet was able to establish itself by the same principle. Plants, animals and soil organisms have built up the soil on which plants and animals can grow and reproduce.
From hunter to builder of great civilisations
Because nature is profligate, as we know, it provided our early ancestors with food and clothing. They collected fruit, leaves and roots and hunted animals or travelled across the steppes as shepherds with their herds. Later, they settled down, cultivated fields and kept animals in the pastures. This is how an original form of agriculture came about. Mother Nature served as the model.
In nature, communities of wild plants and animals develop, adapted to the location. Early agriculture supplemented this by cultivating crops and keeping livestock. It thus created new conditions that offered people more food and enabled cultural development. What began thousands of years ago, embedded in nature in the best sense, was a model for success, even though intensive arable farming and overgrazing already led to soil degradation and the downfall of great civilisations thousands of years ago. Agricultural systems that combine crop and livestock farming have made our current way of life possible in many parts of the world. However, this development has increasingly fallen out of equilibrium over the past 150 years or so.
Consequences of industrialised agriculture
Due to its industrialisation, agriculture increasingly pushed nature to the brink. The proportion of cultivated plants increased markedly compared to wild plants, and livestock farming displaced wild animal populations. In terms of the biomass of mammals, there is 15 times more livestock than wild animals in the world today1. In Switzerland, there are 15 times more farmed birds than wild birds, and the trend is upwards2.
This has negative consequences for soil fertility, groundwater, the climate and biodiversity: the large number of farm animals can only be supplied by intensive arable farming and feed imports. More than half of the grain grown in Switzerland is not destined for human consumption, but ends up in feeding troughs. And that is not nearly enough. Every year, 200 kilograms of feed grain and feed soya are imported into our country per capita to produce eggs, meat and milk.
Disadvantages of the specialised forms of farming
As in many parts of the world, agriculture in Switzerland too has long since bid farewell to the idealised farm we have in our minds. In addition, there is a strong increase in the specialisation of production, especially in the valleys. Today, 41 percent of the businesses there are focused on crop farming, 45 percent on animal husbandry. Just 14 percent are still considered mixed farms, which combine crop and livestock farming.3
The combination of specialisation and feed imports has fatal consequences. Because with the added feed, nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus, are also introduced into the system. Farms that feed their animals with bought-in fodder apply excessive amounts of fertiliser to their fields in the form of manure and slurry.
The vicious circle of artificial fertiliser
The industrialisation and specialisation of agriculture since the beginning of the twentieth century went hand in hand with the chemical production of nitrogen fertilisers, which is still increasing worldwide. This energy-intensive process is linked to natural gas production. The chemical production of nitrogen fertiliser – together with its use – contributes around five percent to global greenhouse gas emissions.4 In addition, its use in cultivation reduces the resilience of crops, which is corrected with synthetic chemical pesticides. This in turn reduces biodiversity, pollutes groundwater and reduces the humus content of the soil. This classic vicious circle releases further CO2. Intensive agriculture is moving further and further away from sustainable management. How, then, can I explain this to my grandchildren?
Fortunately, there is opposition
A glimmer of hope: the concept of intensive, specialised agriculture dependent on the use of chemical inputs was met with opposition from the outset. On the one hand, there were numerous farmers, who did not trust the promises of ‘modernity’ and stuck to the traditional, diverse management of their farms. My grandparents were among them, for example. Then, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there were various movements that sought new, less aggressive ways of producing food and tried out early forms of organic farming, for example the Lebensreform movement, known for its health food stores.
Rudolf Steiner set a milestone in 1924 with the Agriculture Course. This is the name of a series of eight lectures on the 'spiritual-scientific foundations to allow agriculture to thrive'. They encouraged the biodynamic method of farming. The founder of anthroposophy gave the lectures to an audience of around 130 people at a country estate in Silesia, where the industrialisation of agriculture was particularly advanced. The participants were mostly farmers or landowners who had recognised the first negative effects of ‘progressive’ agriculture on soils, seeds and product quality.
Comprehensive farm organism
In his Agriculture Course, Steiner outlined the farm as an independent organism integrated into nature and the landscape, building on the possibilities offered by the soil, and dispensing with the input of artificial fertilisers and animal feed. The farm views itself as a varied interplay of crop cultivation and animal husbandry that mutually support each other, managed by the farmer. He describes an additional type of fertilisation, the biodynamic preparations, to stimulate soil activity and strengthen healthy plant growth.
Ruminants, especially cows, but also goats and sheep, play a central role, feeding on meadows and pastures – and in reasonable numbers, because the size of the herd is limited by the farm's feed resources. The digestive system of ruminants, with their four stomachs, is able to transform grass (and hay), which is indigestible for humans, into milk and meat, and also to excrete dung that is highly valuable for soil fertility. The manure compost is used as a vitalising fertiliser on the arable land where cereals, legumes, oilseeds and vegetables are grown for human consumption. Trees and shrubs provide fruit, nuts, berries, windbreaks and shade, and contribute to landscape conservation and biodiversity.
International reach
In the 100 years since its inception, biodynamic agriculture has gained momentum and is now represented in over 60 countries on all inhabited continents. The linkage of crop and animal production is still one of the basic principles of this cultivation method, which is used by small and large enterprises worldwide to produce goods sold under the Demeter label.
In addition, biodynamic agriculture has inspired organic farming, which has also spread across the globe and achieved a remarkable impact. In Europe, almost ten percent of agricultural land is already farmed organically, and in Switzerland the figure is 18 percent. No synthetic chemical pesticides or artificial fertilisers are used on this land. The interaction between crop cultivation and animal husbandry and the maintenance of natural soil fertility is widespread on organic farms.
Organic and biodynamic agriculture will continue to develop and expand in the future. This is encouraging, as this trend is influencing conventional agriculture, which in Switzerland is in some cases moving closer to sustainable methods. Evidence of this can be seen in our landscape, where there are many more animals in the pastures than there were just a few decades ago. This is a story I will gladly tell my grandchildren. It will make them happy.
