%0 Journal Article
%T The Secrets of Koberwitz: The Diffusion of Rudolf Steiner¡¯s Agriculture Course and the Founding of Biodynamic Agriculture
%A John Paull
%J Journal of Social Research & Policy
%D 2011
%I University of Oradea
%X Rudolf Steiner presented his Agriculture Course to a group of 111, farmers and others, at Koberwitz (Kobierzyce, Poland) in 1924. Steiner spoke of an agriculture to ¡®heal the earth¡¯ and he laid the philosophical and practical underpinnings for such a differentiated agriculture. Biodynamic agriculture is now practiced internationally as a specialist form of organic agriculture. The path from proposal to experimentation, to formalization, to implementation and promulgation played out over a decade and a half following the Course and in the absence of its progenitor. Archival material pertaining to the dissemination of the early printed editions of ¡®The Agriculture Course¡¯ reveals that within six years of the Course there was a team of more than 400 individuals of the Agricultural Experimental Circle (AEC), each signed a confidentiality agreement, and located throughout continental Europe, and also in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and USA. Membership expanded to over 1000 AEC members (with a lower bound estimate of 1144 members) who were committed to working collectively towards an evidence based, new and alternative agriculture, ¡®for all farmers¡¯, which was to be developed into a ¡®suitable for publication¡¯ form. That publication milestone was realized in 1938 with the release of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer¡¯s ¡®Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening¡¯ which was published simultaneously in at least five languages: Dutch, English, French, German and Italian
%K Organic Farming
%K Anthroposophy
%K Goetheanum
%K Agricultural Experimental Circle (AEC)
%K Count Carl Keyserlingk
%K Kobierzyce
%K Poland
%K Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening
%K Ehrenfried Pfeiffer
%U http://www.jsrp.ro/content/JSRP-Nr3_PAULL/JSRPNr.3_PAUL.pdf?attredirects=0