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Re: BioDynamic Farming
Jonathan Haskett wrote:
A vibration of what? Measurable how? In what sense do mean
that the soil is a living organism? The whole soil or only
the organic portion?
that they are not ruinously determental. To prove that they are
beneficial it would be necessary to do controlled trials in which
all management factors were the same except the biodynamic applications.
Then there would need to be some measureable improvement.
My comment:
I spent almost two years living and working on a bio-dynamic farm and
garden in England and I met a lot of people who believe in
biodynamics. As you can see I speak of biodynamics as it was a
religion - one should believe in it, there are some things one cannot
prove. I would like to put stress on the fact that I DO NOT believe
in it - I am a scientist myself. I had seen many things which really
did not convince me about this way of farming as something unsual, on
the other hand I saw that this way can work - I think there are some
interesting ideas in biodynamics which everyone can take advantage
of trying to look at the agriculture not only as a pure science or
bussiness - maybe I'm wrong but to me agriculture contains a bit of
art.
Talking of proving biodynamics - there are some experiments,
unfortunatelly done by biodynamic people, so I wouldn't be really
convinced. But as far as I know in 1992 Dr. Howard Lee of Wye
College, England was supervising a PhD. student from Brasil who did
exact experiments with biodynamic preparations - methods of these
experiments were quite sophisticated and I think the results should
be available by now. On the other hand those experiments were carried
out on the farm of the Wye College so only the plots were treated as
biodynamic - and this is a real disadvantage - any experiments on
biodynamics ands organics should be carried out as on-farm research.
Zbynek Ulcak ulcak@pok0.vszbr.cz
Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry Brno
Czech Republic