In 1924, Rudolf Steiner published The Course for Farmers, which brought together all of his lectures devoted to biodynamic agriculture. Today, it is mainly viticulture that puts these precepts into practice, most often stripped of their esoteric background. The anthropologist Jean Foyer has just published a rigorous investigation into this movement that intrigues many.
Rudolf Steiner is the father of anthroposophy, a spiritualist and esoteric philosophy that seeks to apply to the fields of health, education (with the Waldorf-Steiner schools still in operation), architecture, economics, religion and agriculture under the name of biodynamics.
Biodynamics, an original branch of organic farming
Often suspected of being a sectarian movement, particularly in many parliamentary reports, anthroposophy does not appear in agricultural labelling, which instead insists on the ecological nature of its practices. Biodynamics is an original branch of organic farming that is based on an integrated vision of the production unit (the agricultural organism), taking into account lunar and stellar rhythms in the management of crops and, from a technical point of view, uses “preparations”, decoctions based on natural plants and animal and mineral compounds such as silica.
This agricultural system is currently in full development, especially in viticulture. The Demeter label, which allows consumers to know that they are buying food produced biodynamically, claims 9,000 labeled farms and companies in 60 countries, including 1,071 in France, covering 28,388 hectares.
However, viticulture represents a large part of it. 706 wine estates are officially biodynamic, covering 13,950 hectares. Their number has increased by 50% in the last five years. An anthropologist at the Center for Research and Documentation on the Americas (CREDA, CNRS), Jean Foyer conducted 90 interviews with biodynamic winegrowers in Anjou, a region where the practice is developing strongly. His work has just been published by WildProject, under the title The beings of the vine, investigation into the worlds of biodynamics.
Jean Foyer. Credits: Jean Foyer
“The revival of the reputation of Anjou wines comes from these organic and biodynamic winegrowers”
Why did you choose this land?[…]
- sciencesetavenir.fr
