Biodynamic Agriculture: The Journey from Koberwitz to the World, 1924-1938

Summary

In the last year of his life, the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner challenged the direction and practice of contemporary agriculture. This was an early response to the proliferation of chemical agriculture. Steiner laid the foundation for an alternative agriculture, one that would ‘heal the earth’, in the agriculture course, a series of eight lectures at Koberwitz (now Kobierzyce, Poland) in 1924. Steiner set in train a process that led to the development, articulation, and naming of biodynamic agriculture, culminating in the publication of 'Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening' by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in 1938. Pfeiffer's book appeared in Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian, and fulfilled Steiner's injunction to bring his agricultural lecture course to "a form suitable for publication".