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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.

Jonathan Smith, a 26-year-old British organic vegetable grower, recently hosted a biodynamic conference at his small farm on the Isles of Scilly, 30 miles off the southwest coast of England. “What holds me back is the discipline in following biodynamics,” he says. “It’s not easy to get started. You can’t just do it half-measure and see if you want to go all the way. And it looks as if it would involve more labour and time to do it, and I’m not sure you can get a price beyond that of organic.”

Yet Smith admits some of his doubts about biodynamics faded when he saw how it was done. At the conference, one of Steiner’s prescribed preparations was applied to his compost pile, and he’s curious to see what happens. “Who knows? If I see some great results, I might go in for it.”

The difficulty for farmers in making the transition is one thing that keeps biodynamic produce a rare sight in grocery stores, even ones specializing in natural foods. Most people in North America get biodynamic fruits and vegetables direct from the farm through a community-supported agriculture program that biodynamic growers helped pioneer.

It’s far easier for wine-growers to convert to biodynamics because vineyards rarely exceed a few acres and there’s a substantial financial premium for grapes believed to have a finer taste. Indeed, wine is rooted in the concept of terroir—essentially, the taste of a place—which fits neatly with the biodynamic emphasis on the soil itself. This explains why wine is the fastest-growing sector by far in biodynamic agriculture.

Indeed, the wine industry is the only sector within which biodynamics is seeing any growth in northern Europe, its longtime stronghold. The number of biodynamic farmers is growing slowly in Germany, according to Kern of the IBDF and actually declined in the Netherlands for several years until levelling off at about 120 in 2005, according to Saal. This in spite of all the enthusiastic students in rubber boots shovelling manure at the Warmonderhof Agricultural School, which is thriving even though a nearby conventional agricultural college recently shut its doors.

What explains this stagnation at a time when biodynamics is taking off in North America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Brazil and even Egypt?

Saal blames the high cost of getting started in farming, especially biodynamic cultivation. He says it’s impossible for most Warmonderhof students to buy farms, even from biodynamic growers who got involved in the 1960s and are now retiring. “A lot of our students go to France or Eastern Europe,” he says, “where the land is less expensive.”

A second factor, Saal says, may be the mystical nature of biodynamic practise, which deters aspiring farmers who are interested in growing food but not in exploring new spiritual realms.

That’s why Candelario, whose job it is to drum up further interest in biodynamics in the U.S., says, “I’m focusing on the quality of the food and the health of the soil, not whether someone has a more spiritual sense of farming. I see it as a lot like yoga. You are more likely to get started because you want to be more flexible and have better cardiovascular health rather than as a spiritual search. Then later, you may get interested in the spiritual side of it.”

I reconsider my own leeriness about the magical, mystical elements of biodynamics when picking a big red apple from a tree in Warmonderhof’s orchard and taking a bite.

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