Market Farming

[Hugh Lovel <uai AT alltel.net>]

From the ASK HUGH File

Hugh Lovel, Director Union Agricultural Institute,
Blairsville, Georgia USA




Hugh Lovel often is a respondent on the international biodynamic e-mail
list BDNOW moderated by Allan Balliett out of Charles Town West Virginia,
USA. The following is excerpted from one of Hugh's responses to someone
from India.





Dear Ajit,

Well run biodynamic farms compare favorably in yields with the best
chemical farms. And because they are improving the environment instead of
degrading it they improve their yields while the chemical operations keep
using more and more chemicals and often see yields decline. A comparison of
biodynamic versus comparable conventional in New Zealand showed the
biodynamic farms were more profitable. Greg Willis of AgriSynthesis in
California showed his wine growers saved over $400 per acre while
increasing yields dramatically over the years before their conversion.

There really isn't any method I know of that works so well as biodynamics.
It kind of makes you wonder why biodynamics hasn't caught on a lot better
than it has. But you will notice from reading this e-mail list that the
level of understanding is not really very high. People are mired in
materialism I guess.

I hear so much talk about soil. Everyone practicing organics is building
soil instead of mining it with chemical salts and drenching it in poison.
Great stuff!

But when you stop to think about it mostly the plant is above ground in the
atmosphere. All fruiting and ripening takes place in the atmosphere. And
only biodynamics seems aware that the vitality of the atmosphere is fully
as important as the vitality of the soil. I've been pointing this out for
years now to people and they still look at me uncomprehendingly and go on
talking about soil. The most important input for most farms is nitrogen.
But there's carbon, hydrogen oxygen and sulfur too. These things are all
free for harvest from the atmosphere. Why don't people get it? We're
farming the atmosphere.

If your crops have insects and diseases they are being overwhelmed by
digestion before they ripen. This comes from too much emphasis on the soil
and not enough on the atmosphere. Only biodynamics seems to have any answer
for how to enliven the atmosphere. Everyone else seems to be taking the
atmosphere for granted and if anything, polluting it. Biodynamics can clean
up the atmosphere. It can restore a stagnant atmosphere and cure both
droughts and floods.

Organic practitioners are building up the digestive forces in the soil, but
neglecting the atmosphere. That's why organic growers--despite being better
ecologists--continue to get fungus and bugs and have to resort to stopgap
methods that can be fairly costly. Even though their plants are being fed
better from the soil nothing is done about the vitality of the atmosphere.

An older wisdom that was particularly widespread in India, but known also
in the West, named fire, air, water and earth as the elements. But these
elements were permeated and enlivened with ether (and also astrality). The
fire element with warmth, air with light, water with tone, and earth with
life. The atmosphere gives the plant warmth and light and the soil gives
tone and life. The plant has to have healthy etheric forces both in the
atmosphere and in the soil to be really successful.

Oxygen is the carrier of the ether (and nitrogen carries the astrality).

Lime  is oxygen in combination with calcium and related elements. Lime is
like glue and drags downward.

Silica is oxygen combined with silicon. Silica leavens and works upward in
the summer growth processes and thus carries lime upwards to fill out the
foliage and fruit of the plant.

Clay is oxygen in combination with aluminum and this aluminum oxide along
with silica mediates between the lime and the silica. It's function is to
give and take.

Biodynamic agriculture looks at the human being as threefolded so that at
one pole there is the head and at the other is the belly, with the heart
mediating between the extremes just as clay does in the soil. In terms of
our spiritual side this threefolding is into thinking at the head pole,
willing at the belly pole, with feeling from the heart mediating between
the extremes.

Biodynamic agriculture takes advantage of the fact that life grows from
seeds and where there is a concentration of life forces more will follow.
The biodynamic farmer puts a boundary around his farm so that it will hold
its vitality and not leak it away. He sprays his preparations within that
boundary, kind of like sowing seeds. That way preparations that have been
especially charged with formative, organizing forces by being placed in cow
horns and buried can be used on the soil and in the atmosphere in very
minute doses to sow life force patterns and bring organizing forces into
being there. So biodynamics is able to enliven both the soil with horn
manure AND the atmosphere with horn silica. And with horn clay the
mediating effects of clay are similarly boosted. Horn clay is a must on
sandy, rocky soils, but it works even better on clay. It really wakes clay
up and things grow very well indeed.

The farm is viewed as a living organism with a head, heart and belly.
Biodynamic agriculture was developed in order that people would have a
bridge uniting the will and thinking. Feeling is that bridge and this is a
very feeling way to farm. When the human being is clear and integrated
kundalini rises and the spirit can manifest in everyday life. People are
going around with their chakras all sludged up with invalidations and
suppressions of all kinds. When they look within they see this creative
energy as a sparkling fire or spinning wheel and it is tragically
beautiful. That's because of all the invalidation and suppression and
because the bridge between their thinking and their will is broken and
clogged. Ideally one should be crystal clear. Biodynamics deals with this
problem by way of nutrition. Yoga and meditation have their place, but
nutrition is one of the most key things. I don't think you are going to see
many spiritually awakened people who got that way on junk food.

This works. If it is done well enough it works VERY well indeed. And it is
cheaper in the long run than anything else I know of. At first making and
applying the preparations can be tough and perhaps even expensive. But the
horns of your Indian cattle are beautiful and it is the heavy, old horns
from cows who have lived out their span that you want. You don't want to
get the horns of bulls or the horns of young cows. If it's one thing India
has it is cows and manure. But once the horn preparation forces are growing
in the farm environment (supported by compost made with additional
preparations) it is effective AND cheap. Biodynamics can restore the damage
done to India by the "Green Revolution."

Maybe you want to be a good ecologist and realize that our customary belief
that UNIFORMITY and COMPETITION are desirable is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Nature shows us that DIVERSITY and COOPERATION are the winning strategies.
So one must farm with that in mind. But biodynamics is effective and cheap,
and once you bring a piece of land to life it will thrive beautifully. And
the food? The best.

Commonly biodynamics is misunderstood and commonly it is practiced poorly
even by many of its oldest adherents. That's too bad, but it ought to catch
on better in India than any place else in the world because there is some
residue of the old wisdom of things in India. There is some awareness of
the need to clean out one's chakras and get the vital kundalini force
flowing in a clear and integrated body. It is much easier to do this eating
biodynamic food.

And, of course, we older folks don't benefit as much as babies and
children. We're old and crippled and it's doubtful we will ever reach our
potential as spiritual beings. Even so though, it's amazing what biodynamic
food can do for us.

Biodynamics is a revolutionary spiritual practice. Truly revolutionary. You
may as well be skeptical at first. But give it a good try.


Best,
Hugh Lovel