That quotation could have come from the Rio Summit of 1992 but in fact it is 104 years old and was quoted in Lady Eve Balfour's 1943 book The Living Soil which catalysed the foundation of the Soil Association.² Despite that, concern about sustainability at the global level is relatively new. Here is the 1987 UN Brundtland Report definition of sustainable development:

What is not made very clear is why it matters if our kind fades from the earth or future generations cannot meet their own needs. In these quotations is a tacit assumption that the continued existence on earth of anthropos, of Man, is somehow terribly important. And who would think otherwise?

Anthroposophy, in the form of the spiritual science developed by Rudolf Steiner, helps to make us aware of why Man's continued existence is important. It sees the present earth as one of a number of planetary evolutions of the dwelling place of Man. The previous one was the Moon-existence during which the cosmic wisdom was developed in all that we survey on our present earth and which is now being gradually understood by science. In our present Earth existence, the conditions are such that we have the possibility to develop love to its highest form. Love, even in its most sensuous form, can only arise in a situation where there is first of all differentiation between the beings developing love. That differentiation comes through another principle active during our Earth evolution, namely the individualisation principle which arises through the descent into matter. As we know, that principle can go too far, can become terrible egoism in which no love but self-love is possible. A mighty cosmic being intervened in our evolution when the descent into matter threatened to go too far. The incarnation of the Christ Being – the I AM – and most importantly the Mystery of Golgotha and the resurrection which followed made it possible for the human being to become free of the compulsion of the material, free of natural necessity. Through this human redemption and through the human being that of the whole earth became possible. St Paul wrote to the Romans that 'the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestations of the sons of God' and that 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain.'³ Release from that pain depends on the human being evolving beyond this material existence through the development of love. And love in its highest form cannot exist without freedom. It cannot be compelled. By freedom, we of course mean here inner freedom.

And when we look about our contemporary world and at our own individual records on love and inner freedom we can agree, I think, that we have plenty of work to do! One further consequence of the Christ event is that thinking, a life process involving what we call the etheric, the realm of the Earth in which the Christ now dwells, need no longer be mere intellectualism, but can allow the human being to experience his spirit active in his thinking. And through that spiritual activity moral development of the human being is made possible. The cosmic wisdom developed during the previous planetary existence can now on Earth be transformed into love.

The foregoing was a brief picture of the gigantic mission which faces humanity and why we need an earth to fulfil it. Now I want to look at the philosophical underpinnings of how we go about sustaining life on the earth. Returning to Eve Balfour's book we can collect the following key points from its postscript:

• sustainability of human civilisation
• cultivating altruism
• cultivating a Christian attitude
• ending materialism (philosophical), intellectualism & mechanistic philosophy
• ending materialism (economic)
• relearning that life exists
• overcoming the Darwinian egotistical competition principle
• developing a co-operation model for working with nature and the living world
• developing a holistic approach

I would not disagree with any of these ideals as long as they are not made, as Eve Balfour tends to make them in her book, into categorical moral imperatives. But there is also something more behind the organic food movement than these ideals. It is the feeling that organic is natural, that with organic farming and foods there is a possibility of returning to Paradise. 'Eat organic for a living countryside' is the slogan on this year's Soil Association campaign poster.⁴ It depicts 14 colourful scenes of rural wildlife, beauty and tranquillity. The underlying message seems to be 'eat your way back to Paradise or heaven'. Is it veiled materialism? Perhaps, but to be fair to the Soil Association, this campaign poster is based on the results of a compilation of 13 years of research⁵ which shows a dramatic increase in numbers and biodiversity of plants, insects and animals on organic farms in 23 studies throughout Europe and has been acknowledged and praised by UK Environment Minister Michael Meacher.⁶ Furthermore, there is a real practical value of biodiversity to farming systems in that, for example, healthy levels of natural predators such as beneficial insects can be maintained right where they are needed.

Despite the laudable philosophical and practical aims behind the organic movement in general, I feel that there should be something more. One might expect a movement which through sustainable agriculture and forestry wants to change for the better the face of large parts of the land surface ought to have behind it clear pictures of what is Man and what broadly is his mission. Without that picture, it is groping in the dark. Eve Balfour's picture was Christian. But the present Soil Association has no trace of that perspective. However, its current director, Patrick Holden when cross examined on a radio programme recently said:

"As a farmer, I feel that I am in a relationship with nature some of which is based on my scientific understanding and some of which implies and, I think, needs a sense of reverence towards a universe which I don't fully understand. And if you want to call that a religious attitude, yes, I'm happy to do that."⁷

And another famous supporter of organic agriculture, Prince Charles, recently stated:

"Only by rediscovering the essential unity and order of the living and spiritual world - as in the case of organic agriculture or integrated medicine or in the way we build - and by bridging the destructive chasm between cynical secularism and the timelessness of traditional religion, will we avoid the disintegration of our overall environment."⁸

Here we have two representatives of modern human beings. We can recognise in both Patrick Holden's and Prince Charles' personal perspectives that there is something of the dichotomy between spirit versus matter, religion versus science, believing versus knowing that the modern human being has to grapple with. But this philosophical position – i.e. living indefinitely in this dichotomy – seems to me to be unsustainable in the long term. One or other will get the upper hand and at the present time it is science and the technology that it inspires. If science, as it is generally practised today, is to underpin organic agriculture, it is reasonable to expect that organic agriculture will gradually become indistinguishable from chemical and biotechnological agriculture. Indeed, compromises are already allowed in organic agriculture and there is always pressure from the farmers to make more compromises. How can we avoid the convergence of organic and chemical agriculture? A possible answer, if it is given sufficient will and resources to develop, is through an integrated approach of an agriculture founded on spiritual science. Such an agriculture was outlined by Rudolf Steiner in his agriculture course at Koberwitz in Silesia in 1924 from which I take the following quotation:

"Either we must learn once more, in all domains of life— learn from the whole nexus of Nature and the Universe—or else we must see Nature and withal the life of Man himself degenerate and die. As in ancient times it was necessary for men to have knowledge entering into the inwardness of Nature, so do we now stand in need of such knowledge once again."⁹

As not all conventional farmers have given up checking the moon phase before they sow their seeds it seems likely that some organic farmers do this too, but it is true to say that organic farming generally leaves out of account the great cosmic relationships. Not so the holistic approach inspired by Steiner which became known as biodynamic agriculture. Firstly it has a picture of man behind it. It is based on an anthroposophical picture of Man which clarifies Man's mission as I have already outlined it. And whilst Steiner's course is as much about the spiritual scientific view of the workings of nature and cosmos as it is a practical manual for farming, it does not close without an acknowledgement of the value of an attitude of piety and reverence in studying these things and putting them into practice. Furthermore, substances are regarded not just as material entities but foci or traces of cosmic processes. Food is the bearer of forces contained in those processes which are necessary for the human being andmost of the matter of food is actually discarded. The forces made use of are not merely what can be measured by a food chemist in a bomb calorimeter when the food is burnt.

But how does the way we produce our food and the resulting quality of it have a bearing on the human being's mission? Finding an answer to this means accepting that there is more to nutrition than refuelling with calories and substances. The mealtime grace of Angelus Silesius points beyond this:

Here we have a pointer towards the transubstantiation. The healing here is not just a physical healing but extends to a capacity which is uniquely human, our spiritual activity of thinking. Transubstantiation or redemption of thinking is part of Man's mission. Rudolf Steiner in his lecture cycle on St Thomas Aquinas described how it is only the redeemed human thinking that will find a true relationship with the Christ.¹⁰

A path from ordinary thinking towards the kind of thinking which can form the basis of true inner freedom based on moral intuition and moral imagination is set out in Rudolf Steiner's early work The Philosophy of Freedom.¹¹ How do we perceive our thoughts? Just as with healthy vision we need a healthy organ for sensing the light and colour, so too with thinking, we need a healthy organ to become aware of it. I am referring of course to the brain. The development of healthy organs requires proper nutrition. There have been a number of reports in the last 20 years linking poor diets to behaviour aberrations, especially in young people. Certainly hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder has been linked to diet problems.¹² However, I would like to point to a phenomenon which has been given the name 'Environmentally Mediated Intellectual Disorder'.¹³ Researchers, using UN Food and Agriculture Organisation data, have identified this disorder and linked it to a subtle form of malnutrition. They argue that green revolution crops – i.e. crops bred to use high artificial fertiliser inputs whilst needing heavy protection from agrochemicals – high in macronutrients such as starch, are poor in the kind of micronutrients needed for proper intellectual development or have substances present such as lead which impair intellectual development. The biological link is that the gut of the child develops to compensate for the lack of micronutrients and this occurs at the expense of the brain. We have thus established a link between how the human being treats his environment via agricultural practices and food to his cognitive faculties, faculties through which his humanness is most expressed.

The fall into matter, the expulsion from Paradise was triggered in the Genesis story by the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Ethics or moral knowledge came into existence. Almost everyone now has the capacity to make moral judgements. Surveys show that a significant proportion of lay people regard GM food as unnatural.¹⁴ This pre-scientific intuition about naturalness is widely discredited by ethicists. The Nuffield Council failed to see any sense in it in its recent report and thus no reason to draw a distinction based on natural/unnatural. I quote from their report:

Yet the organic food industry thrives on trying to get back to nature in the raw. Russell Ford, managing director of the UK supermarket chain, Iceland, when interviewed on the radio about his company's intention to buy up 40% of the world's freezable organic vegetable supply said that Iceland wants to supply 'natural food' at affordable prices. (We might note, in passing, that transporting food over huge distances, freezing it, redistributing it and microwaving it is not only very unnatural but seems to completely defeat a sustainable organic objective.) The underlying idea is that because the food is natural it must be good. This is an example of the naturalistic fallacy. No scientifically verifiable attribute of an action or thing is necessarily also good. This is anyway obvious from the fact that a significant group of people think that GM food is good. They argue that the whole of farming has been doing something unnatural for some 10,000 years. We can illustrate this vividly by the example of maize and ts probable ancestor teosinte. It is easy to see that maize is a monstrosity compared with teosinte, yet this does not put us off enjoying our corn on the cob. And we can choose hundreds of similar examples from traditional breeding – the huge variety of dog breeds for instance.

Yet people critical of modern genetic engineering ask if human beings are entitled to restructure the foundations of life. There must be something behind this widespread concern. To find it we need to develop the concept of naturalness a little further.

When we say that a certain person has committed an unnatural act we would in most cases not be able to claim that there are no examples of such an act in the animal kingdom. In a sense then, the act is perfectly natural. But if our vague feeling for what is unnatural behaviour was more concretely expressed as 'behaviour not becoming of a human being', then we might be getting closer. But we already have the word 'immoral' for such a concept. Unnatural human behaviour would for normative ethics be immoral behaviour. Thus, many people feel intuitively there is something deeply immoral about genetic engineering – hence the oft heard term 'playing God'. The 'playing' implies that we do not realise the full implications of what we are doing. Such people are taking what the ethicists call a deontological ethical stance. Genetic engineering is intrinsically wrong, full stop. There is, they argue a limit beyond which we should not go in instrumentalising plants and animals. Genetic engineering, they say, goes beyond that limit. However, as neither this nor the accusations of hubris cuts any ice with the biotechnologists, for the reason I have already given, opponents of genetic engineering are on the constant lookout for consequentialist ethical arguments to support their position. Examples are that GM crops would create superweeds; destroy beneficial insects; upset the life of the soil; increase the use of herbicides; lead to monoculture and hence risk famine; or put the whole of agriculture at the mercy of transnational corporations. Suffice it to say that nobody has died from GM crops yet and they have not caused any catastrophes apart from problems for the producers as a result of the huge public backlash in Europe. But all the consequentialist arguments deflect from the real issue of whether something is intrinsically wrong with genetically modifying crops. Indeed, all those potentially bad consequences could – and probably will be – avoided by a combination of husbandry strategies and additional technical fixes.

The intrinsic wrongness of using genetic engineering in agriculture is that it abstracts the organism from its full interaction with the cosmic processes and places it in very carefully controlled conditions of isolation in the laboratory. A Europe-wide consultation towards a Sustainable Organic Seed Breeding has reached the conclusion that no laboratory processes are acceptable, even ones which have been used hitherto in the production of novelties such as the cereal triticale that have been cultivated by organic farmers.¹⁶ It recommends that organic plant breeding should occur in the regions where the organisms will be used and as far as possible on real farms. A particular additional characteristic of biodynamic agriculture is that a farm is treated as an individuality. Yes, the individualisation principle, which I have already mentioned, works right down into the farming landscape, to the region where a particular type of food is produced. But biotechnologists seek to counter this individualisation by breeding cultivars that have almost universal applicability. Uniformity, rather than individualisation is the rule for the genetic engineer as it was for the agriculturist of the green revolution. And to secure that uniformity, something of the conditions of the laboratory have to be taken into the fields. The crops have to be nourished with synthetic chemical media and cosseted from competition with and predation by other organisms by a cocktail of chemicals. Happily, the operation of organic farming has, according to European regulations which came in last August, to be carried on without the use of GMOs.¹⁷ Biodynamic farming also has legal status in the organic sector in most countries. In the UK the body that certifies biodynamic food and production, the Demeter Standards Committee of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association has consistently opposed the introduction of GM crops and set out its reasons in a statement.¹⁸

This opposition of the organic sector has resulted in a head on collision with the chemical farming sector. This was most dramatically illustrated by the action last year by Greenpeace led by its director and organic farmer Peter Melchett driving a tractor mower in which an attempt was made to destroy a field of GM maize. The battle really broke out when the farmer attacked the Greenpeace vehicles with a mechanical digger. The resulting jury trial of what became known as the 'Greenpeace 28' was inconclusive on the charge of criminal damage and the Crown Prosecution Service has fixed a retrial for September 2000.¹⁹ Here we have a breakdown in a social consensus process. Behind this conflict are two conflicting pieces of legislation which on the one hand permit GM crops to be grown and on the other require organic farmers not to use them. In practice not using GM crops also means keeping them out of organic systems. An attempt to resolve the conflict in the UK has been initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF) in collaboration with the Department of the Environment (DETR). The organic sector representatives have met on several occasions with the biotechnology industry body SCIMAC (Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops) which is charged with overseeing the farm-scale trials of GM crops. Unfortunately, apart from a willingness of DETR, who approve the releases of GM crops, to notify the organic sector of trial locations as they become available, the discussions have reached deadlock.

The problem centres on separation distances from GM and organic crops. The organic sector, led by the Soil Association which certifies about 80% of the organic food in the UK, want separations of up to 3 kilometres for some crops whereas SCIMAC is offering only a few hundred metres. The Soil Association backs its demand with scientific evidence on pollen travel.²⁰ However, SCIMAC has pointed out that by the very nature of the way the incidence of cross pollination declines with the distance from the pollen source, any separation distance must have associated with it a corresponding level of contamination, however low. Even at kilometre distances there is still a theoretical risk. The question now being put to the organic sector is: what level of contamination by GM pollen will it accept? The Soil Association has steadfastly maintained all along that the consumer will not accept any contamination of organic food by genes from GM crops. Furthermore, there is no provision in European legislation for an acceptable contamination threshold, although the regulation adopted last year admits that one may eventually have to be set to cover adventitious contamination.¹⁷ A further compromise has recently been reached in that SCIMAC and others concerned will fix the location of the field trials mindful of the locations of certified organic holdings.

A further development in the battle of words is that SCIMAC accused the Soil Association of wanting large separation distances as a means of making it impossible to conduct agriculture with GM crops in the UK. SCIMAC received no denial of this. Certainly, the Soil Association is campaigning for a ban on the commercial planting of GM crops in the UK. It is difficult to see how this particular battle will be resolved without one party giving way. Either the organic sector has to accept a level of genetic pollution and that the level will gradually rise as more GM crops are deployed or biotech agriculture has to be abandoned.

In looking at the battle for the earth, I have considered one narrow aspect – GM crops. Equally important threats to our earthly environment and thus to our mission here include pollution through chemicals or radioactivity and electromagnetic radiation. All raise the question of Man's attitude to nature. Do we see ourselves as dominators or stewards, subduing nature as advised in Genesis?²¹ A picture of the dominator approach comes at the end of Goethe's Faust where Faust holds back the sea and diverts rivers in a massive engineering enterprise to help the couple Philemon and Baucis, but it all goes horribly wrong and they are drowned. Moving to the other end of the spectrum, we could regard ourselves as partners or even participants in nature. The biodynamic method of agriculture has been identified by the Dutch ethicist Petran Kockelkoren as taking the role of the participant.²² It is an approach which works with nature, respecting the intrinsic worth of living organisms. It is probably the most sustainable approach to agriculture and, I think, an essential part of the mission of developing love.

One final point I would like to make is that the battle for the earth and the necessary renewal of agriculture towards sustainability is not going to work without a fundamental rethink of the form of society. Agriculture and society need to develop together. Genetic engineering has been forced on our culture by commercial interests. The consumer never asked for it and clearly, in Europe at least, does not want it. Our approach to agriculture is obviously an aspect of culture in that it depends very much on the spiritual input of those engaged in it. Until we win through to an acceptance of freedom in cultural-spiritual life – and this would include education – the conflicts arising from leaving cultural development to be determined by the forces of the free market are going to continue. This freedom in culture goes hand in hand with two other aspects of the social organism. We agree rights with one another and I have given you an example of that process taking place between the biotech and the organic farming sectors. That process has to take place on a basis of equality. At present that relationship is distorted by the relative wealth of the two sectors. There is no equality there yet. And finally there is economic life where, unless associative forms of working in brotherhood or solidarity are adopted, involving all stakeholders, consumers, traders and producers, exploitation and poverty will continue. Here I have sketched out Rudolf Steiner's picture of the threefold social organism.²³ It is a picture centred on the human being which accords with his mission of transforming thinking, feeling and willing so that the new principle of love comes to full realisation and manifestation before this Earth-existence of the human being eventually gives way to another.

1. N. S Shaler (1896) Harvard University

2. Balfour, E.B. (1943) The Living Soil, Faber & Faber, London.

3. Romans 8, 19-23

4. Soil Association, Bristol House, 40-56 Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6BY, T: 0117 929 0661. F: 0117 925 2504. E: info@soilassociation.org.

5. The Biodiversity Benefits of Organic Farming, The Soil Association, May 2000 (see ref. 4). Also available in PDF format at www.soilassociation.org.

6. Meikle, J. (2000) Meacher praises organic farming. The Guardian, Lond.26^th May.

7. BBC Radio 4, The Moral Maze, 7 June 2000.

8. H.R.H. Prince Charles, BBC Reith Lectures 2000, Lecture 6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture6.stm

9. Steiner, R. (1924) Agriculture, 8 lectures, Koberwitz, Silesia, 7 - 16 June 1924. Biodynamic Agricultural Association, London. Lecture 2.

10. Steiner, R. (1920) Thomism in the Present Day, Chapter III in 'The Redemption of Thinking', 3 lectures, 22-24 May 1920. Anthroposophic Press, New York.

11. Steiner, R. (1894) The Philosophy of Freedom. Trans. Michael Wilson (1964). Rudolf Steiner Press, London.

12. Bryce-Smith, Derek (1986) Chem. Soc. Rev. 15 93-123. Also see the article 'Crime and Nourishment' by the same author at http://www.cmhc.com/perspectives/articles/art03964.htm or http://mhnet.org/perspectives/articles/art03964.htm.

13. Williams, C. (1998) Terminus brain: the environmental threats to human intelligence. Cassell. For an introductory article see www.susx.ac.uk/Units/gec/pubs/briefing/brief-13.htm. More details from Dr Christopher Williams, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1 0AL. Tel: 0171-612-6628, Fax: 0171-612-6632. Email c.williams@ioe.ac.uk

14. See for instance: Grove-White, R. et al. (1997) Uncertain World: GMOs, Food & Public Attitudes in Britain, Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, University of Lancaster, 1997.

15. Genetically Modified Crops: The Ethical & Social Issues (1999) Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 28 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3EG. www.nuffieldfoundation.org. Chapter 1.

16. Lammerts van Bueren, E. et. al. (1999) Sustainable Organic Plant Breeding, Louis Bolk Instituut, Hoofdstraat 24, NL-3972 LA Driebergen, Netherlands. Also available at http://www.anth.org/ifgene/orgbreed.htm

17. COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 1804/1999 of 19 July 1999 supplementing Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 on organic production of agricultural products and indications referring thereto on agricultural products and foodstuffs to include livestock production. Published in the Official Journal of the European Community on 24^th August 1999 (L 222 1-28, URL: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/oj/1999/l_22219990824en.html, follow link “1”).

18. Demeter Standards Committee Statement on Genetic Engineering (April 1999) Available from Fiona Mackie, Demeter Standards Co-ordinator, 17 Inverleith Place, Edinburgh EH3 5QE, Fax: 0131 476 2996. Email: fionamackie@ic24.net.

19. For full details of the action, the activists, the motivations and the trial including videos see www.greenpeace.org.uk/, following links to 'campaigns' and 'GM foods'.

20. Briefing Paper, 8.3.99. Soil Association, 40-56 Victoria Street, Bristol BS1 6BY. Tel: 0117 929 0661, Fax: 0117 925 2504. Email: info@soilassociation.org. www.soilassociation.org.

21. Genesis, 1:28

22. Kockelkoren, P. J. H. (1995) Ethical Aspects of Biotechnology in Plants, in Agriculture and Spirituality, Essays from the Crossroads Conference at Wageningen Agricultural Uni. International Books, Utrecht.

23. Steiner, R. (1923) Towards Social Renewal. Trans. M. Barton. Rudolf Steiner Press, London. Also available in the F. Thomas-Smith translation at http://www.anth.org/socialthreefolding.