11
Re-Enchanting Agriculture
indigenous farmers – and their knowledge systems – worldwide (Gonzalez-De Molina, 2013; van
der Ploeg et al., 2019; Rosset and Altieri, 2017; Sevilla-Guzman and Woodgate, 2013). Yet although
the movement includes many such farmers’ organisations whose members live according to their
cultural worldviews (see, e.g., the membership of La Via Campesina: https://viacampesina.org/en),
its research and taught practice, like the permaculture and organic farming movements, are more
characteristic of secular-material frameworks (see, e.g., Altieri, 1995; Gliessman, 1998). In arguing
for the democratisation of knowledge and ways of knowing for agroecology, Pimbert (2018) calls
for deep social change in order for new knowledge systems to emerge and identifes participatory
democracy as providing the means to do so. Yet according to McGilchrist’s treatise, as long as the
left hemisphere, the emissary, is facilitating such change and doing so from within the worldview
and structures it has itself created, impact at a systemic level may not be guaranteed without a conscious commitment to developing new cosmological and ontological frameworks.
This analysis of the aforementioned farming movements’ key texts suggests that only biodynamic
farming embraces the invisible dimension as a fundamental component of its cosmological and ontological frameworks and therefore also its research and taught practice. Steiner called his agricultural
course, Spiritual Foundations for a Renewal of Agriculture: A Series of Lectures (Steiner, 1993).
These lectures were not aimed at those new to farming; they were given as hints or ‘indications’ to
already-practising farmers, veterinarians and others connected with the land and/or interested in spiritual matters. Many in the audience were also anthroposophists – that is, they were practising spiritual
science – and they had invited Steiner to provide spiritual-scientifc insights into the problems they
were facing in agriculture and especially around plant and livestock health. Steiner had earlier developed spiritual science as both a spiritual path and a scientifc method, emphasising that there is an
objective and comprehensible spiritual basis for a reality that can be directly experienced through the
development of human imagination and intuition, and verifed by rational thought (McKanan, 2018).
Courtney (2005) explains that this spiritual dimension enables biodynamic agriculture to provide a
healing of the earth through developing a human understanding of the living forces of growth and life
that originate from the sun, moon and zodiacal star system (which in biodynamics is termed ‘the formative forces of the cosmos’ (2005: 15)). Biodynamic production standards refect this understanding,
stating, for example, that ‘In life processes many diverse forces, which do not originate solely from
material interactions, work together. All agricultural measures rely on activating processes which
enhance and enliven these natural connections’ (BDCert, 2012: 7).
Contrary to Mollison’s (mis)understanding of biodynamics, Steiner stressed that each farmer should
experiment before making any claims about the practices. He explained, ‘The aim of these lectures
was to arrive at such practical ideas concerning agriculture as should combine with what has already
been gained through practical insight and modern scientifc experiment with the spiritually scientifc
considerations of the subject’ (Steiner, 1924: 9). So, paradoxically, whilst biodynamic farming does
not claim, like the other movements, to draw directly from indigenous knowledge, its worldview is in
fact more compatible, and there is evidence that, for this reason, its practices may be synergistic with
those of indigenous farming communities (Klocek, 2013; Ramprasad, 2012; Wright, 2019). Sprunt, a
sustainable development worker, describes his successful collaboration with farming communities in
Northeast India: ‘…prior to Christian missionaries arriving, they had also used the moon as a guide
for various farming practices, they could readily access cow dung and horns – it excited the groups to
realise that Biodynamics was appropriate in this context’ (Sprunt, 2006: 86).
This blind spot of the agroecological, organic and permaculture movements to the invisible dimension of farming may be depicted through the differing frameworks in Figure 1.1. This chapter has
discussed that industrial farming focuses on the visible-material dimension, and on reducing the
whole to its component parts (also known as reductionism), as depicted in Figure 1a. Agroecology
(in its broad sense) takes into account not only the parts but also the whole system, yet still from a
visible-material perspective, as depicted in Figure 1b. This chapter introduces the concept of ‘Subtle
Agroecologies’, that is the invisible counterpart to the physical, which may take a reductionist and/or
a systems focus. So if we take both agroecology and Subtle Agroecologies together, we arrive at a
Re-Enchanting Agriculture
indigenous farmers – and their knowledge systems – worldwide (Gonzalez-De Molina, 2013; van
der Ploeg et al., 2019; Rosset and Altieri, 2017; Sevilla-Guzman and Woodgate, 2013). Yet although
the movement includes many such farmers’ organisations whose members live according to their
cultural worldviews (see, e.g., the membership of La Via Campesina: https://viacampesina.org/en),
its research and taught practice, like the permaculture and organic farming movements, are more
characteristic of secular-material frameworks (see, e.g., Altieri, 1995; Gliessman, 1998). In arguing
for the democratisation of knowledge and ways of knowing for agroecology, Pimbert (2018) calls
for deep social change in order for new knowledge systems to emerge and identifes participatory
democracy as providing the means to do so. Yet according to McGilchrist’s treatise, as long as the
left hemisphere, the emissary, is facilitating such change and doing so from within the worldview
and structures it has itself created, impact at a systemic level may not be guaranteed without a conscious commitment to developing new cosmological and ontological frameworks.
This analysis of the aforementioned farming movements’ key texts suggests that only biodynamic
farming embraces the invisible dimension as a fundamental component of its cosmological and ontological frameworks and therefore also its research and taught practice. Steiner called his agricultural
course, Spiritual Foundations for a Renewal of Agriculture: A Series of Lectures (Steiner, 1993).
These lectures were not aimed at those new to farming; they were given as hints or ‘indications’ to
already-practising farmers, veterinarians and others connected with the land and/or interested in spiritual matters. Many in the audience were also anthroposophists – that is, they were practising spiritual
science – and they had invited Steiner to provide spiritual-scientifc insights into the problems they
were facing in agriculture and especially around plant and livestock health. Steiner had earlier developed spiritual science as both a spiritual path and a scientifc method, emphasising that there is an
objective and comprehensible spiritual basis for a reality that can be directly experienced through the
development of human imagination and intuition, and verifed by rational thought (McKanan, 2018).
Courtney (2005) explains that this spiritual dimension enables biodynamic agriculture to provide a
healing of the earth through developing a human understanding of the living forces of growth and life
that originate from the sun, moon and zodiacal star system (which in biodynamics is termed ‘the formative forces of the cosmos’ (2005: 15)). Biodynamic production standards refect this understanding,
stating, for example, that ‘In life processes many diverse forces, which do not originate solely from
material interactions, work together. All agricultural measures rely on activating processes which
enhance and enliven these natural connections’ (BDCert, 2012: 7).
Contrary to Mollison’s (mis)understanding of biodynamics, Steiner stressed that each farmer should
experiment before making any claims about the practices. He explained, ‘The aim of these lectures
was to arrive at such practical ideas concerning agriculture as should combine with what has already
been gained through practical insight and modern scientifc experiment with the spiritually scientifc
considerations of the subject’ (Steiner, 1924: 9). So, paradoxically, whilst biodynamic farming does
not claim, like the other movements, to draw directly from indigenous knowledge, its worldview is in
fact more compatible, and there is evidence that, for this reason, its practices may be synergistic with
those of indigenous farming communities (Klocek, 2013; Ramprasad, 2012; Wright, 2019). Sprunt, a
sustainable development worker, describes his successful collaboration with farming communities in
Northeast India: ‘…prior to Christian missionaries arriving, they had also used the moon as a guide
for various farming practices, they could readily access cow dung and horns – it excited the groups to
realise that Biodynamics was appropriate in this context’ (Sprunt, 2006: 86).
This blind spot of the agroecological, organic and permaculture movements to the invisible dimension of farming may be depicted through the differing frameworks in Figure 1.1. This chapter has
discussed that industrial farming focuses on the visible-material dimension, and on reducing the
whole to its component parts (also known as reductionism), as depicted in Figure 1a. Agroecology
(in its broad sense) takes into account not only the parts but also the whole system, yet still from a
visible-material perspective, as depicted in Figure 1b. This chapter introduces the concept of ‘Subtle
Agroecologies’, that is the invisible counterpart to the physical, which may take a reductionist and/or
a systems focus. So if we take both agroecology and Subtle Agroecologies together, we arrive at a