RSF Welcomes New Borrower Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association

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June 28, 2010

By John Bloom

It is sometimes said that lenders go into the weeds in the due diligence process as they unearth the details of an organization’s credit-worthiness. With RSF’s recent bridge loan to the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association (BDA), the metaphor is relevant as the Association builds its infrastructure and broadens its base of support. The timing of their loan aligns with and will support their significant growth in order to address the issues of truly healthy food, farming, and soil fertility.

Biodynamic farming practices have been receiving increasing interest and press as wines made from biodynamic grapes have received international notoriety, the community supported agriculture (CSA) movement has grown from three groups in the late 1970’s to over 3,500 groups today, and the integrity of organic standards has been questioned. The BDA has a central role to play in furthering biodynamic agriculture through general education and conferences, ongoing publications, cultivating new forms of ownership and association, as well as helping to train the next generations of biodynamic farmers.

Here is an example of the kinds of questions that the BDA is posing as it looks to meet the needs of the future:

• What are the inner and outer capacities we need to sustain ourselves, our farms, our communities, and the movement in general?
• What are the opportunities for those committed to working toward a regenerative, community-based agriculture, and what is biodynamic farming’s responsibility for and contribution to this undertaking?
• How can biodynamic agriculture and the values it stands for play a central role in the food revolution that is so needed for our fragile and nearly exhausted ecosystems?

Biodynamic agriculture was first developed early in the 20^th century in response to farmers who recognized that the soil they were farming was depleted, and the food, especially potatoes, no longer carried the nutritional value needed as a staple food. A group of farmers asked Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian scientist and philosopher whose work inspires RSF’s focus areas, what he might have to offer them to address what they were experiencing from their land. Based upon his research, he gave a series of lectures, now called the Agricultural Course. Thus was born biodynamic farming.

One of the central tenets of biodynamics is that each farm is a living organism with its own characteristics tied to geography, geology, the farmer, and the forces inherent in its environs. The farmer’s task is to maintain and grow soil fertility, which in turn is a reflection of the plants grown on the soil, the quality of the animal husbandry, and the degree to which animal and plant waste are transformed into renewed soil through the composting process. In biodynamic farming, compost is referred to as farmer’s gold. One of the beauties of this approach is that each farm can become self-contained, meaning that the farm could grow food for itself and others, grow the feed for the animals, be able to renew the soil via the compost, and generate new plant life through the cultivation and saving of seeds. This management results in a system with virtually no external inputs — this is the ideal.

One of the educational goals of the BDA is to dispel some of the myths that circulate around biodynamics by explaining its processes and purposes, and demonstrating the efficacy of biodynamic practices, along with the preparations that are applied to the soil and plants to support their health and productivity. A further goal is support for the development of economic forms, such as CSA’s and producer-consumer cooperatives, that make it possible for the farmer to make a decent living. The idea is to create a system that is outside the current free market, a system which treats produce and the farmers’ work as commodities by tying financial support only to the food produced. Community-based economic forms foster direct, transparent, and personal relationships between farmers, distributors, and eaters — and return real culture to agriculture.

For more information about the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association or to become a member, visit www.biodynamics.com.

John Bloom is Director of Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance. If you enjoyed this post, look for John’s book, The Genius of Money, on steinerbooks.org.

• Published by John Bloom
• Categories: Blog, Food & Agriculture, Lending
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