Hocus pocus? Spirituality and soil care in biodynamic agriculture

Abstract

In this article, I participate in efforts to re-imagine soils as lively, complex, more-than-human ecologies, by turning to the largely sidestepped subject of spirituality in agriculture. Spiritual knowledge practices rarely sit comfortably alongside technoscientific, productivist accounts of soil health, and yet they can re-configure how soils are conceptualised and managed, with implications for relationships of care. Drawing on an extended period of learning with a Community Supported Agriculture project in south Wales, the article explores how care is cultivated through a non-conventional method of farming known as biodynamics, which incorporates astrological and spiritual principles. I suggest that biodynamic narratives and rituals encourage attentiveness to more-than-human agency and energy, to depth (not only underground but also above-ground influences of the air and celestial bodies), and to reciprocity between soil biota and humans. Biodynamic practices also make space for mystery, thereby resisting drives to measure and map, and offering possibilities for disrupting anthropocentric approaches to soil care. However, the example presented here also highlights how, despite biodynamic’s growing popularity, its spiritual elements have a tendency to be kept quiet, their presence sidelined by more familiar, secular, narratives. Nonetheless, I contend that if effective soil care demands more diverse knowledge practices than those that are currently obliterating critical soil communities at an alarming rate, then there can be much to learn from a touch of magic.

Decolonizing agriculture in the United States: Centering the knowledges of women and people of color to support relational farming practices

“…In the words of Farmer M, "we're living in a PTSD society… this whole country was founded off the backs of people of color and stolen land." While some may find it hard to imagine that these traumas are stored in the land and can be communicated to us, a growing number of farmers use biodynamic practices to relate to soil as a spiritual entity (Pigott 2020). Interacting closely with the land thus provides an opportunity for communication.…”

Support for “we” visions and for broadening the scope in the debate on alternative forms of agriculture

“…The whole thing becomes a question of faith, with only true believers allowed to comment on the approach, and the non-scientific climate that develops around it prohibits scientists from having much influence on it anymore. This message is particularly clear in the recent article of Pigott (2021), who concludes her starry-eyed account of biodynamic agriculture with the conclusion that "there can be much to learn from a touch of magic". Scientists are bound to find this statement disturbing, if not downright depressing.…”

“…A group of farmers, concerned about the direction agriculture was taking at the time and wanting to promote a vision of agriculture that would be drastically different, turned to apparently the only receptive ears they could find, those of a well-known philosopher, specialist of oriental spiritualism, by the name of Rudolf Steiner. He not only came up with a vision of an ecological and sustainable agriculture that would be in tune with the "influence of the cosmos on all life on Earth" (Pigott, 2021), but he also made detailed proposals on how to increase soil fertility without the use of mineral fertilizers or synthetic pesticides (Paull, 2011). Some of these proposals, relying for example on the use of cover crops, natural pest repellents, or the mechanical removal of weeds, make eminent sense and have since become mainstream in organic farming.…”

On the Usefulness of Modern Animism: Co-Creating Architecture with Soils as Ontopolitical Practice

“…5) have not proven useful, at least not so far. It has helped other earthy practices to acknowledge and respect you, and themselves (Piggot 2020). This spiritual framing, often based on religious rituals, may act in a similar way as the abstract geometry of the mown patterns that made you laugh in OUR landscapes to help humans read your emergent diversity as positive.…”

“…The later, such as the landscape gestures that WE have performed, or ecological soil care, are where the actual attentiveness is developed, humans act, and you respond, and humans notice this change and act accordingly; they are iterative, gardening, rituals. A practice may combine both, for example biodynamics combines religious rituals that the performers experience as a change in their human emotion toward soils, but not as changes in the soil itself, and they also apply various practices of soil care that do (Piggot 2020). Some rituals may equally be both symbol and iteration, such as the moments of stillness and respect before cutting a tree, or simply contemplating a place.…”