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Tasting is believing

Esoteric practises, like burying manure inside cows’ horns, has put many people off biodynamic agriculture. Now the sensational flavour—and ­ecological benefits—of biodynamic produce is winning them over.

Steiner also recommended seven special procedures for making compost based upon medicinal herbs like yarrow, nettle or chamomile being mixed with water, peat, deer bladders or cattle intestines. “This is the art of the compost,” declares Warmonderhof’s Jan Saal.

Walking me through the 85 hectare (210 acre) farm, where more than 80 youths aged 16 to 19 (and a few adult students) learn biodynamic farming techniques at a school supported by the Dutch education ministry, Saal emphasizes that the purpose of these spiritually inspired practises is to create prime topsoil. Animal organs, horns, medicinal herbs, minerals, manure, long-term crop rotation and consultation of lunar cycles—as well as other biodynamic principles, such as nurturing wild animals, keeping bees and minimizing use of inputs not produced on the farm—help make the soil as healthy as possible, he says, even if science can’t yet tell us exactly how.

Some agricultural researchers confirm claims about the quality of biodynamic soil. A study comparing 16 neighbouring conventional and biodynamic farms in New Zealand published in Science in 1993 concluded that “biodynamic farms proved in most enterprises to have soils of high biological and physical quality: significantly greater in organic-matter content and microbial activity, more earthworms, better soil structure, lower bulk density, easier penetrability and thicker topsoil.” Richer topsoil, claim biodynamic advocates, translates to crops that are sturdier, more disease- and pest-resistant, more nutritious, less perishable, taller and better-tasting.

Saal notes that neighbouring farmers dismissed biodynamics as a crackpot idea when the Warmonderhof school, founded in 1947, relocated here to the Netherlands’ Flevoland province in 1993. But now they’re wondering about things like why the biodynamic fields don’t have the same problems with carrot flies that theirs do.

Thieu Verdonschot, who has grown pumpkins, squash, onions, cabbage and other biodynamic produce on Warmonderhof land for 11 years, remarks, “When conventional farmers see something is working, they take notice. Just yesterday, a farmer asked me about my mustard crop because it is much taller than his. And last week another said I must be farming conventionally now because there were no weeds in my carrots.”

While the phrase “biodynamic” actually predates “organic” (which wasn’t formulated as a concept until 1945 by Sir Albert Howard, a British botanist who studied traditional methods of farming in India and Europe), the vast majority of biodynamic growers and customers have come out of the ranks of organic enthusiasts. “I’d gardened organically for years,” says John Schaeffer, founder of the Real Goods solar and sustainable-products company. But when he decided to plant 130 hectares (320 acres) of land in Northern California in olive trees and grape vines, he opted for biodynamic cultivation. “It’s the next thing,” he says. “Organic doesn’t do as much to give back to the soil.”

The emergence of huge organic farms—where monoculture crops are planted in endless rows, where animals don’t step outdoors, where low-paid farm labourers do the work—leaves some questioning whether organic is much of an improvement over conventional farming. “A lot of organic farms still think conventionally,” observes Saal. “They use organic fertilizers and pesticides in the same way as conventional farmers. Their thinking has not changed. They don’t view the farm as a living organism.”

Elizabeth Candelario, a marketing representative with Demeter, underscores the point. “The only thing required of an organic farm is that they don’t use artificial fertilizers and pesticides, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs),” she says. “Organic doesn’t deal with crop rotation, biodiversity, topsoil, wildlife, composting or how the food is processed.”

Martin Kleinschmit, a cattle farmer in Bow Valley, Nebraska, who made the transition to organic farming 15 years ago when he saw it was more profitable as well as better for the land, is now reading up on biodynamics. “It seems almost like voodoo and there are a lot of things I don’t understand about it,” he says. “But I believe it’s more than organic. There’s a lot of research to support that.”

For now, Kleinschmit has no plans to go biodynamic, he says, because it would take a lot of time to learn a new way to farm and he doubts it could fetch a higher price.

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