HOLY GROUND AGRICULTURE: INDUSTRY OR CULTURE?
Towards Community Agriculture
An Antipodal View
by Christoph Jensen
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
MON(DO)SANTO
MONSANTO AND THE SUNSHINE
MAD COWS -OR CAN WE RESTORE OUR SANITY
1923
Zero-grazing
Cow-rations
The Problem and the Solution in the Lap of Culture
WARFARE
REVEALING A LITTLE MYSTERY (ABOUT MILK)
Motivation – initiation through the will
The Good Mamma
Sensitivity
A different Atmosphere
Cheese-making
THE SAD RAINBOW
‘PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING’ – THE PEASANTS ARE REVOLTING
EYES IN MY FINGERTIPS –
SYNCHRONISITY 47
SEPTEMBER 11TH, ABRAHAM'S DAY
A LAYMAN’S GUIDE OF HOW TO ‘PLAY THE MONEY-MARKET’ or ‘The Art of Buying and Selling Money’
PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION
FROM MALTHUS TO EUGENICS TO ETHNIC CLEANSING
‘Geheime Reichssache’
Malthus
Darwin – Galton
Arthur Count de Gobineau
The Survival of the Fittest
Sterilisation and Euthanasia
Project T4 – Mercy Death
My own Involvement with Persons with Disabilities
HOLY S**T - THE STORY OF NITROGEN
THE STORY OF CAMPHILL
About the author
APPENDIX: 'Seeds of Doubt'
AFTERWORD by MJ Benghu, MP
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‘No
sooner does one ideology (communism;
C.J.) loosen its grip then another swoops down and
seizes the prey. The new instrument of torture will be the market economy. If
you don’t toe the line, you won’t get anything. Not even bananas.’
Günter
Grass, Germany’s most celebrated contemporary
writer and
Nobel Prize laureate, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989*
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(Picture of Artemis & Xhosa Mama)
(Picture of Peter B. and Christoph)
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This book is dedicated to Peter Bayne, a man with Downe’s Syndrome, who has been my companion in farming and dairying for more than 17 years. We also share the same house and table. He taught me ‘attention to detail’ as well as humility when starting ‘my dairy business’. The book is also dedicated to my wife, Uta, my other companion of 26 years.
© August 2002, Christoph Jensen, Camphill Village, P.O.Box 1451, Dassenberg 7350, South Africa,
e-mail: christoph@camphill.org.za
From the Women’s Court we declare that patents on life and patents on bio-piracy are immoral and illegal. They should not be protected, because they violate universal principals of reverence for life and the integrity of culture’s knowledge systems.
We will not live by rules that are robbing millions of their lives and medicines, their seeds, plants and knowledge, their sustenance and dignity and food. We will not allow greed and violence to be treated as the only values to shape our cultures and lives.
We will take back our lives, as we took back the night. We know that violence begets violence, fear begets fear, but also that peace begets peace and love begets love.
We will reweave the world as a place for sharing and caring, peace and justice, not a market place where sharing and caring and giving protection are crimes and peace and justice are unthinkable. We will shape new universals through solidarity, not hegemony.
Women’s worlds are worlds based on protection – of our dignity and self-respect, the well-being of our children, of the earth, of our diverse beings, of those who are hungry and those who are ill. To protect is for us the best expression of humanity. The people who run the global corporations or the WTO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and G-7 governments have tried to transform ‘protection’ into a dirty word, the worst crime of the global market-place. Protecting health, nutrition, livelihoods, all call for trade sanctions and ‘punishment’ by the WTO and the World Bank.
To those who have tried to make protection of life a crime we say, echoing Archbishop Tutu: ‘ You have already lost. You need to get out of the way so that we can protect each other, our children and life on this planet.’
Vananda Shiva: The Violence of Globalisation
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The question whether genetically modified seeds are necessary for humanity is a vexing and highly confusing one. Few of us are aware that the arrival of this technology is the latest development in a long evolution of boardroom decisions that have more to do with a return on investments than with the concerns for ‘spaceship’ earth. The links between banking, oil exploration, the petro-chemical giants, the military-complex and the fertiliser, herbicide and pesticide industry, the seed-companies, the grain and meat trade, the media and governments need to be examined. As the chief executive of British Petroleum (BP) said when surveying the Caspian oil fields: ‘We are not a charity organisation.’ Dick Cheney added when speaking to representatives of the oil industry: ‘I cannot remember a time when the Caspian region had been of such utmost strategic importance.’1 That was in 1998. Today Dick Cheney, then the chief executive of Halliburton, a company in the oil exploration business, is vice president of the United States. His superior, President Bush, has close links to the oil-industry. The Caspian region is probably one of the most environmentally degraded and strategically volatile areas in the world. Another region is the Niger delta in Nigeria that has been similarly ravaged by the greed for crude oil. The ‘Biafra-war’ in the late 60ies was also a brutal corporate battle over the crude oil reserves in that region fought out on the backs of the local population.
The chemical industry is not an isolated enterprise. It requires an infrastructure that in the end is global in nature. The investments, returns and risks are enormous; so are the consequences of the ‘mishaps’. We only have to think of Seveso (Italy), Bhopal (India) and the Alaskan oil-spill, to name just a few incidences. Crude oil and its derivatives have a toxic and destructive effect on the environment, the climate and human beings. That the destructive potentials of these derivatives are consciously employed to wipe out human lives becomes evident from the use of napalm, nerve-gas, ‘simple’ explosives and African landscapes littered with landmines. And it is not only the ‘big players’ that are involved, also the IRA in Northern Ireland made frequent use of ‘fertilsers’ to construct bombs as did the Oaklahoma bombers.
Not to forget Osama bin-Laden and his cohorts who made full use of the kerosene loaded in the tanks of the planes directed into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. How we are going to account one day for the use and misuse of this finite resource, crude oil, is an open question. It is not just a spread-sheet exercise, but this accountability has much more to do with the effect it has on humanity’s psyche, for we are made to believe that it is indeed a life and death question. Our lives are so entrenched in the web and dependencies of that industry that very few have an idea of how to extricate ourselves from this web, least of all the ones directly involved in that industry and its infrastructures.
This book attempts to demonstrate that the ‘solution’ to this problem cannot be left to the financial-economic sector. We can also not expect governments to solve the impasse, as they are co-dependents of, if not identical with, that sector. Five members of the present Bush administration are directly or indirectly linked to Monsanto, the largest manufacturer of genetically modified seeds in the world.2 I do not want to add to a polarisation of positions but ask questions about the relevance and meaning of culture. Cultural life (not to be confused with ‘ethnicity’) is more than the appreciation of concerts, films and paintings, but has to do with education, thought and belief systems, with diversity of expression, with the unfolding of each person’s innate creativity and potential. In that sense charity is indeed a cultural pursuit.It cannot be prescribed as a policy, as it is derived from the ‘heart-activity’ of the individual. Art to the extent that it is driven out of our school-systems is adding to a moral and ethical dilemma. The child’s own innate creative moral and cultural potential is not addressed or awakened. The driving out of music, drama, art and gardening lessons is justified by educational ideas based on the need to ‘prepare the child’ for the ‘real world out there’. It is an up-side down approach to education: ‘educere’ is to ‘draw out’, not to ‘stuff in’. We must be honest then and say, that we are deliberately not addressing the needs of the child, but the need for industrial growth rates. The rush to prepare more and more children for this world has resulted in huge disappointments as the ‘labour-market’ is unable to absorb them, creating an ‘academic proletariat’: many, many matriculated youngsters with shattered dreams. That disappointments at that age lead to aggression is only too understandable. It is not only a problem in the Third World: some federal states in the USA spend already more money on prisons than on education. What (in all humility) I am suggesting is not a system of ‘prison-farms’ for ‘occupational therapy’ for young offenders, but a re-think in our attitude towards the earth.
A re-turn to agri-culture has the potential not only to awaken the creative urges of numerous people, but to ‘clean up’ our act in more than one sense. For that to happen we will also have to address the 'holy cow’ of land-ownership. It is cheap and dangerous to demonise persons who dare address this queston as ‘communist conspirators’. Rather the retail-chains and banks, in other words the ‘hellish world of food-business’ (George Malibot in Mail&Guardian, 16 August 2002), have to let go of their vested interests.
The invasion of the chemical industry into the field(s) of agriculture has created ‘cheap’ food in more than the literal sense. It created an environment that is not only polluted by that industry’s toxic substances, but in no small measure also has polluted our social life. Agri-culture, the way I learned it and in the context I practised it, has the potential for healing. Not only the earth, but also the soul-spiritual life of those who practise it. That way it also contributes to the healing of our social life. Christoph Jensen, 29 August 2002
The mere mention of the name triggers off a whole range of emotions: and this is precisely what it is meant to do. MONSANTO is the largest producer in the world of genetically modified seeds and prides itself as an innovator of techniques that will propel farming to unprecedented heights. It is a brand name. And as a brandname it has to (is designed to) call up emotions, feelings and concepts slumbering in our unconscious. Maybe the name is derived from ‘Monte Santo’, Holy Mountain. ‘MON’, we only have to add another syllable ‘DO’ and we arrive at ‘MONDO’, the earth. And who would not associate ‘SANTO’ with ‘health’, as in ‘sanatorium’ or even ‘santo’ with ‘SAINT’, someone who has attained the level of being ‘wholesome’. We could end up associating the word ‘monsanto’ with the concept ‘Holy Earth’ (Mondo Santo). The word carries a message. ‘Wholesome’ food (as for example in our cereal breakfast) we relate to a healthy diet.
‘The bread from corn
The corn from Light (SUN)
The light from the countenance of GOD.
May the fruits of the earth
Bring Light into our being
Within our Hearts.’
The above grace before meals sums up what also lives in our unconscious as an indisputable truth. We are even taught this truth in school in our most basic biology lessons. I leave aside problems anyone may have with the concept ‘God’ and grant that he/she might appear under any other name. It does not however detract from the miracle, or shall I say aesthetics (art?), displayed in the tangible phenomenon of photosynthesis. It is the miracle of sunlight changing into carbo-hydrates, into sugar. It is also the wonder of colour: the heavenly blue combining with the gold of the sun, ‘greening’ our planet. Once the fruit, in this case corn, is ripe for consumption it takes on the colour of the sun, gold. In fact we are filling our organism with the photo-synthesised light. The ‘ash’, matter, we digest and leave behind as faeces, whilst the ‘forces’ of the sun we retain in our bodily organism as the essential nourishment. It is us, our organism, that di-gests, distils the ‘essence’, the light, from the food and makes it available as ‘radiance’ for the world. We re-cognise this process in many other areas of food-production and refinement. Food processing is essentially a process of pre-digestion happening ‘outside’ our bodily organism. So when we make cheese, yoghurt, bake bread or di-stil wine into ‘spirits’ or simply cook a meal we are pre-digesting it!
The fact that we take these processes for granted, photo-synthesis as well as the processes related to ‘adding value’ to raw-food, makes us forget and dis-interested in the subject. It has led many of us into a situation where we have lost all wonder or veneration for the fascinating processes that underlay the finished product. Division of labour, particularly when it comes to food processing, has led to an alienation from its sources. Those who can afford it (the privileged 20% of the earth’s population) ‘demand’ their daily intake of fast food, produced on conveyor-belts, seemingly with the least amount of physical labour, untouched by human hands. The peasants of this world are viewed as pitiful creatures having not been embraced (yet) by the blessings of western civilisation. If only they would make the ‘switch’ to ‘industrial farming’ all would be well and also they would ‘benefit’ from living in high-rise flats, drive Hondas and Volkswagens, enter the gamble at the stock-exchange – and they even might have the possibility of space-travel.
(Picture: Highriseflats & squatter camps)
Dreams and aspirations conjured up by the giants of the make-believe world of film and television that clash not with civilisations (Professor Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard University: ‘Clash of Civilisations’, 1993, published in ‘Foreign Affairs’, USA) but with the hard realities of the earth as a sustainer of life. But above all these realities clash with concepts and practises that have their origin in our thinking, referred to as ‘-isms’, substitute religions, that provide neither anything to eat, nor values of an aesthetic nature.
Already here we can sense conflict: ‘value’, like all words, is defined by the paradigms we are trapped in. In capital-ism we will foremost think of shareholder value. When trying to apply this concept in education we will think of aesthetic values. When being engaged in soccer we look at transfer-value. The values of the peasantry were/are defined by their own universe, a belief-system that was/is a symbiosis of practical necessities and a (spiritual) power to motivate. Western thought-systems and their practices have reduced the farming-population to a mere 4% of the ‘productive’ workforce. And yet the integration of agriculture into capital-ism has not been solved (hence ‘subsidies’). The reason for this is the different natures of agriculture and the manufacturing industry. In the latter it is the principle of scarcity while in the former it is abundance.
If I as a farmer have a ‘good’ harvest, the chances are that every other farmer also has a good harvest, i.e. the commodity prices go down. For all my efforts I am being punished. It leaves one with very little motivation to thank the Gods for a favourable climate. If by dint of my ‘cleverness’ I discover a niche-market for a ‘cash-crop’ I am in a position to ‘make money’ – until every other farmer ‘goes in’ for the same crop. These crops are often for export, mostly grown on the best of available soils and sometimes helped by a ‘favourable’ exchange rate, meaning that the emerging markets (the ‘underdeveloped’ world) had their currencies destroyed by speculation ‘against’ them. (see: A Layman’s Guide of How to Play the Money-market at the end of the book). More often than not the farms (I am speaking of the ‘emerging’ economies, including South Africa) are owned by ‘foreigners’, not in the least intent to gear their production to the local population. Many Third World countries, peasant-countries, are lured into these cycles of competing with each other mainly for the benefit of the ‘rich’ countries that are ‘bored stiff’ with their conventional home-grown diets and have little or no understanding for the fact that their own farmers have to be subsidised when they ‘only’ produce milk, grain and beef. Why not get something more ‘exotic’ onto the table, never mind if it comes from areas where the population is undernourished. Food for the First World has to remain ‘cheap’ as the available income has to be spent on manufactured goods to keep the (manufacturing) economy humming. 5 – 10% of available income in the first world is spent on food while in South Africa this amount can go up to 50% or more for the poorer urban households, if they have an income to speak of. Strawberries from Kenya, cocoa from Ghana, tobacco from Zimbabwe, tea from Malawi, cocaine from Columbia, coffee from Brazil, seed-potatoes from Egypt, bananas from Guatemala, wine from South Africa, heroin from Afghanistan, pine-apples from the Philippines – this is not the only problem for the indigenous peasants trying to find a plot to grow their own cereals or vegetables, or find grazing-land for their cattle. Increasingly they are also crowded out by multinational companies (as for example in Tanzania)3 that arrive with a whole package of imported wheat seeds (not cassava, the staple diet), fertilizers and machinery. This is termed development aid. Then the pastoral scenes are converted overnight into ‘agri-business’. If only the producers would be allowed to negotiate their own prices. No, the commodity prices are being negotiated ‘on their behalf’ on the commodity exchanges of the metropoles of the UK or the USA, grain for example in Chicago.
The SUN-GOLD, metamorphosed into carbo-hydrates for human nourishment by a cultural activity (agric-culture), is converted into hard cash by the manipulators on the commodity-exchanges according to the principle of supply and demand that should only apply to the manufacturing sector of the economy. Without being aware of it, this principle has led to chaotic and life-threatening situations in the basic food-supplies in the world at large. Rich countries with over-supplies ‘dump’ their cheap and subsidised surpluses on unsuspecting customers in the developing countries as ‘food-aid’, thereby actively discouraging the local farmers from producing their indigenous crops. Added to this, their indigenous farming-methods are being pooh-poohed as inefficient and backward. Agriculture has been inadvertently invaded by another principle that is alien to it. Although the earth provides us with raw materials of many kinds (minerals, oil), the living raw materials require different attitudes from us and different parameters.
It is both a social as well as an ethical question we are confronted with. It has to do with health in the widest sense of the word, mental as well as physical. It also leads us into the future and will instil hope or fear. But even this future is being traded on the stock exchange; yes, you guessed it, as futures – especially agricultural commodities. Scarcity by necessity conjures up fear and its relatives selfishness and hoarding, while abundance fills us with hope. The lean, slim mother is the female that greets us from every magazine-cover, she is in no position to ‘feed’; mamma-Africa is big, fat, warm and (for)‘giving’. The lean, slim female (but with big silicon-implant-titts) is the ‘invention’ of the sex-industry; the big, nourishing mother is the female in her own right – she exudes warmth, hope, security and positivity. The ‘inventor’ of ‘lean-scarce’ economy derives from our male drive.
(Picture of African Mama and Pamela Anderson)
The ‘rape’ of the earth is being perpetrated by our male-psyche; the caring for the earth and our future is accompanied by our female-psyche. In this light we are allowed the question: how did we arrive at this? What does MONSANTO mean when they advertise their logo with the three words: FOOD – HEALTH – HOPE?
My view is: we are not involved in a clash of civilisations, but as world-citizens we are engaged in the subjugation and violation of the archetypal feminine for selfish momentary gains without a thought for the future. We think that we are caught in this paradigm. Although many have a dim awareness of being trapped, we are in mortal fear of admitting to our ‘failing’; another word for this is ‘pride’. Modern economics, but especially the re-hash of liberal capitalism, is the brainchild of our male-psyche. It is like the last stand of a proud and defeated warrior. This in itself would not spell disaster, but it seems that this warrior tries to take the whole of humankind with him into his abyss. It is similar to the story of the patronising family-father who shoots his whole family to spare his wife (the earth, the ultimate provider) and children (the future) the shame of being exposed to ridicule when he knows he is on the verge of bankruptcy. The introduction of Genetically Modified Seeds (GM-seeds) designed to produce ‘impotent’ seeds (‘terminator-seeds’) and programmed to respond to specific fertiliser and spray regimes only, are of course intended to bind, or rather chain, the farmer to the company producing the wares. It is similar to the hedonistic power the pusher (supplier) has over a drug-addict. Capitalism has never and will never give rise to a culture, but it is our task to insert a cultural life (ethics) into the life of economics. It goes without saying that ethics in our day and age is not the prerogative of one religion or confession. In a time when more and more people have crossed the threshold of linking their inner life with that of the world around them we will increasingly discover actions and deeds based on ‘authenticity’. It means that ones outlook on life and ones actions are derived from ones ‘holiest of holy’, the well-spring or source of creativity. All (authentic) religions (not religions turned into ideologies) can be regarded as a schooling towards the discovery of this inner wellspring which is our (higher) Ego. Then, and only then, we can speak of a new civilisation. Civilisations by definition are not aggressive. An ideology however based on the assumption of the ‘survival of the fittest’, on reductionism and self-interest will turn human beings into aggressors. This all the more when they realise that they are wounded. Also then we have a choice to submit to our (spiritual) impotence and ask for therapy or succumb to our bravado. Agriculture, as an archetypal activity, and those involved in it always had a cultural-religious leaning. That is probably the reason why farmers are being singled out to be of a ‘conservative’ disposition. Hence, ‘modern farming’ is to do with turning our backs to superstition-muck-and-magic. I sometimes wonder whether the present day lure towards witchcraft by many western teenagers is not a corrupted form of veneration or misguided wonder that is associated with the dimly felt miracles of creation. Where to find access to a true modern spirituality?
What about photosynthesis? What about the delicate cosmic processes we as earth-citizens are engaged in?
(below an extract from Vananda Shiva’s book: ‘Stolen Harvest’, Zed Books, London 2000. Published with permission.)
During the United Nations Bio-Safety Negotiations, Monsanto circulated literature that claimed ‘that weeds steal the sunshine’. And during the debate about the entry of Cargill (another GM Seed ‘manufacturer) into India in 1992, the Cargill chief executive stated: ‘We bring Indian farmers smart technologies which prevent bees from usurping the pollen.’ A world view that defines pollination as ‘theft by bees’ and claims that diverse plants ‘steal sunshine’ is one aimed at stealing nature’s harvest, by replacing open, pollinated varieties with hybrids and sterile seeds and destroying bio-diverse flora with herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup.
For centuries Third World farmers have evolved crops and given us the diversity of plants that provide us with nutrition. Indian farmers evolved 20 000 varieties of rice through their innovation and breeding. They bred rice varieties such as Basmati. They bred red rice and brown rice and black rice. They bred rice that grew 18 feet tall in the Gangetic floodwaters, and saline-resistant rice that could be grown in the coastal water. … Free exchange of seed among farmers has been the basis of maintaining biodiversity as well as food security. The exchange is based on cooperation and reciprocity. … It is an acculmulation of tradition, or knowledge of how to work the seed. … New seeds are first worshipped and only then they are planted. New crops are worshipped before being consumed. Festivals held before sowing seeds as well as harvest festivals, celebrated in the fields, symbolise people’s intimacy with nature. For the farmer the field is the mother; worshipping the field is a sign of gratitude towards the earth, which as mother feeds the millions of life-forms that are her children.
But new intellectual-property-rights regimes, which are being universalised through the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), allow corporations to ursurp the knowledge of the seed and monopolise it by claiming it as their private property. Over time this results in corporate monopolies over the seed itself.
Corporations like RiceTec of the United States are claiming patents on the Basmati Rice. Soybean, which evolved in East Asia, has been patented by Calgene, which is now owned by Monsanto. Calgene also owns patents on mustard, a crop of Indian origin. Centuries of collective innovation by farmers and peasants are being hijacked as corporations claim intellectual property rights on these and other plants. …
Today ten corporations control 32% of the commercial seed market, valued at $23 billion, and 100% of the market for genetically engineered, or transgenic seeds. The same corporations also control the global agri-chemical and pesticide market. Just five corporations control the global trade in grain. …
This monopolistic control over agricultural production, along with structural adjustment policies that brutally favour exports, results in floods of food from the United States and Europe to the Third World. As a result of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the proportion of Mexico’s food supply that is imported has increased from 20% in 1992 to 43% in 1996. After 18 months of NAFTA 2.2 million Mexicans have lost their jobs and 40 million have fallen further into poverty. One out of two peasants is not getting enough to eat. As Victor Suares has stated: ‘Eating more cheaply on imports is not eating at all for the poor in Mexico.’ …
Trade liberalisation of agriculture was introduced in India in 1991 as part of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment package. …
Aggressive corporate advertising campaigns, including promotional films shown in villages on ‘video-vans’ were launched to sell new hybrid seeds to farmers. Even gods and goddesses and saints were not spared: in Punjab, Monsanto sells its products using the image of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion. Corporate hybrid seeds began to replace the local farmer’s varities. The new hybrid seeds, being more vulnerable to pests, required more pesticides. Extremely poor farmers bought both seeds and chemicals on credit from the same company. When the crop failed due to heavy pest incidence or large scale seeds failure many peasants committed suicide by consuming the same pesticides that had gotten them into debt in the first place. …
The Isho Upanishad says: ‘A selfish man over-utilising the resources of nature to satisfy his own ever-increasing needs is nothing but a thief, because using resources beyond one’s needs would result in the utilisation of resources over which others have a right.’
In the ecological worldview, when we consume more than we need or exploit nature on principles of greed, we are engaging in theft. In the anti-life view of agri-business corporations, nature renewing and maintaining herself is a thief. Such a worldview replaces abundance with scarcity, fertility with sterility. It makes theft from nature a market imperative and hides it in the calculus of efficiency and productivity.
MAD COWS OR CAN WE RESTORE OUR SANITY?
1923
On 13 January 1923 Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher (1861-1925) talked in front of the workers who built the First Goetheanum near Basle in Switzerland, a building made entirely out of wood, one of the biggest of its kind in the world. He frequently met with them answering their questions to themes that they chose, one of them being the feeding of proteins and more specifically urea and meat-offal to cows. Many of the sessions were recorded and published as ‘the Workmen Lectures’. That was more than 60 years before the first recorded incidence of Mad Cow Disease or BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy*. He more or less described the symptoms of what is happening to these animals now. He maintained they would ‘degenerate, go mad’. He also stated that these symptoms would not appear overnight but that they would manifest after several generations, i.e. they would have a degenerative effect on the species. How could he ‘know’ that? He developed a gift of seeing things in their own right, developed his thoughts out of what the subject wanted to reveal, ‘true’ to its nature. This is also known as the ‘phenomenological approach’. Having developed this discipline which he termed ‘spiritual science’ he made suggestions that gave new directions to education, medicine, religion, and agriculture. Far from wanting to portray him as a ‘miracle healer’ or clairvoyant some of his suggestions appear to be just that: far fetched, incomprehensible, ‘out-of-this-world’. And yet he wrote a ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’ that allows one to develop a kind of thinking that is necessary to overcome the dogmas we are trapped in and which have ultimately led to practises the consequences of which we are reaping today, including BSE.
Nine months later the same Rudolf Steiner talked about the cow in a most enthusiastic and loving way that is worth recording today: ‘Let us consider the ox or the cow. In other connections I have spoken of how enchanting it is to contemplate a herd of cattle, replete and satisfied, lying down in a meadow; to observe this process of digestion which here again is expressed in the position of its body, in the expression of its eyes, in every movement. Take an opportunity of observing a
cow lying in the meadow, if from here or there some kind of noise disturbs her. It is really wonderful to see how the cow raises her head, how in this lifting there lies the feeling that it is all heaviness, that it is not easy for the cow to lift her head, as though something very special were within it. When we see a cow in the meadow disturbed in this way, we can but say to ourselves: This cow is astonished that it must lift its head for anything but grazing. Why do I lift my head now? I am not grazing, and there is no point in lifting my head unless it is to graze. ……. If we further observe the animal’s whole form, we see it is in fact what I may call an extended digestive system! The weight of the digestion burdens the blood-circulation to such a degree that it overwhelms everything to do with head or breathing. The animal is all digestion. It is infinitely wonderful, when looked at spiritually, to turn one’s gaze upwards to the birds, and then look downwards upon the cow. ….. The cow becomes beautiful in the process of digestion. And when it is said by ordinary philistine concepts, indeed by philistine idealism, that the process of digestion is the most lowly, this must be indicted as untruth, when from a higher vantage-point, one gazes with spiritual sight at this digestive process in the cow. For this is beautiful, this is grand, this is something of an immense spirituality. …. What today sounds grotesque or paradoxical, what may seem almost insane to an age that has retained absolutely no understanding for relationships in the world, does nevertheless contain a truth which points back to ancient customs. It is a striking phenomena that Mahatma Gandhi, who certainly points his activity in an outward direction, but at the same time stands within the Indian people, somewhat like a rationalist over against the Hindu-religion – it is striking that in his ‘rationalised’ Hinduism Gandhi retains the veneration for the cow. This cannot be set aside, he says. …. Things such as these, which have so tenaciously retained their position in spiritual cultures, can only be understood when one is aware of the inner connections, when one really knows what tremendous secrets lie in the ruminating animal, the cow.’4
The difficulty will be to find the cows that lie in the meadow. Most of them have disappeared from our sight. And this points already to the crux of a dilemma of truly apocalyptic proportions. There are not less animals than 77 years ago, no, there are many more. They are kept in feed-lots or housed and the food is brought to the animals, most often not green, not from a meadow, but in rations designed to enhance their ‘performance’ in terms of milk- and meat-production.
Yet the advertising industry knows exactly what to appeal to when presenting us with a tasty looking cheese or steak. The packaging shows us the pastoral scenery where cows live in an environment that is wholesome and therefore ‘true’. The reality is of course very different. The insecurity this has resulted in for the consumer is only too understandable as he/she is confronted only with bottles, cartons or sachets. Well meaning homeopathic doctors suggest their patients avoid all dairy-produce and that meat from an unknown source be avoided at all cost. More people than ever rely on ‘Rennies’ to help digest the indigestible. Every Tom-Dick-and-Harry can claim that their farm is run on ‘organic’ lines, how else does the milk get into the udder? Organic farming that strives to enhance and nurture the humus layer of the soil as a means to produce healthy plants and animals, is a discipline that has evolved alongside chemical farming over the last 80 years. Much research is going into the practise and it is constantly being adapted to specific climatic and soil conditions. Many of its data and findings are derived from traditional farming methods. One of its main objectives is the sustainability and enhancement of soil conditions for future generations. Sustainability has become the buzz-word of our time and has also given rise to a confusion of terminology to the degree that TIME-magazine can point fingers at ecologists accusing them of neglecting the undernourished 800-million, without mentioning the fact that more than half the grain produced in the world is being force-fed to farm-animals: ‘….industrialised production systems (sic) offer the only hope of meeting the FAO’s goal of food-security for all. Sustainable intensification of the majority of the world’s food and agricultural production is a must.’ (Jan. 15th, 2001) Until very recently the term ‘sustainable’ was the domain of environmentalists who campaigned for an agriculture true to its nature.
Having been involved with organic farming for more than 30 years, 18 years as farmer and more than 12 years as a dairy-manager, I believe that we have arrived in a cul-de-sac that requires not only a gigantic economic effort but much more a cultural-social one to arrive at truly sustainable agricultural practises. I will admit that I have no instant solution up my sleeve that would make the turn, but I do know that ‘science knows’ why we have arrived in this cul-de-sac.
Cows are roughage-converters, that means in very simple terms: they have four stomachs to convert cellulose into protein. Only the ruminating animals, the cow being one of that species, have the extraordinary ability to redirect urea, i.e. a nitrogen compound, from its kidney into its stomach for it to reform into microbial protein.
(picture of the cow’s interior)
That way nitrogen is made available again for nutrition. This principle is being exploited by certain feed companies by adding synthetic urea to concentrated feeds, also known as ‘concentrates’.
The symbiosis of cow and pasture is the truest form of culture, hence agri-culture. Any society that wants the claim of being civilised attached to it can trace itself back to the cow-culture, the very word ‘cow’ being incorporated in the word cou -ntry. The Swiss linguist Dr. Arnold Wadler published a book in 1936 in Basle/Switzerland, ‘Das Rätsel der Indogermanen’ (‘The Riddle of the Indogermans’) in which he proves that in Sanskrit, Hebrew, in the Sumerian language and in Chinese there is a direct relationship between the word ‘cow’ and the defining of a geographical area. In Sanskrit, believed to be the root language of many others, the word cow, ‘go’, is identical with earth, ‘go’. Even in German the phonetics for ‘Gau’, old for ‘district’ or ‘commune’, we meet again as ‘cow’ in the English language.
It was not just meat and milk that we are being provided with, but also its dung, that wholesome substance which in its true form never stinks but smells. Any experienced farmer worth his/her salt will detect in the smell of the cow’s dung her wellbeing. For centuries it provided the soil with the ingredients to enhance its humus-layer, now being depleted by the application of mineral-fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. I am by no means pleading to put the clock back 400 years. But I am pleading for an intelligent way forward that is being shown by the wellbeing of the cow herself: what is good for the cow is good for all of us in the long run. She is the environmentalist – and she is w-holy, mondo santo.*
Here I have to insert some information regards the ‘industrialised production system’ (TIME magazine). What is a cow-ration? What does a cow eat if not grass? It is a complicated formula of grain and concentrated proteins thought out in the heads of analysts who work with the assumption: what-goes-in-must-come-out. I will not deny for a minute that this has presented us with more and more milk and ‘cheaper’ meat to the extent that the production of milk has to be curbed in parts of the world. This milk amount is still further increased by the injection of the cows with Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH, also known as BST, Bovine Somatropin, in South Africa) that has a dubious health record. It is produced and promoted by Monsanto. 15% of all cows, also known as ‘turbo-cows’, in the US are being ‘treated’ with BGH. Monsanto has campaigned for it that none of the milk-containers have to be labelled indicating that the milk comes from cows treated with the hormone, also in South Africa. The election campaign of the present Secretary of Health, who is responsible also for the activities of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), was partly financed by Monsanto. BGH (or BST) is banned in organic farming and most countries in the EU, but not in South Africa.5
But science also knows that the rations described above are not fit for a ruminant, that the rumen (the stomach of the cow) is being cheated and bypassed and intoxicated. The British BSE-expert Stephen Dealler explains that as far back as 1979 ‘experts’ recognised that proteins of concentrates are not only not destroyed, but that they are being absorbed by the intestines and thereby enhance the production of meat and milk.6 And protein is anything that appears under that umbrella: urea, chicken-faeces, carcasses of disposed and sick animals, meat-offal ground up, dried and made palatable with artificial taste-enhancers. No animal in her right mind would touch such food, yes, they are intelligent and they have a mind.
(Picture of meat offal factory from ‘Stern’)
And there are side-effects: these proteins being only half-digested start fermenting in the intestines and create an ‘acid’ atmosphere. This is why the dung of such animals stinks. The animals are sick. The dung, often contaminated with hormones or antibiotics, is useless, it does not decompose. There is overwhelming evidence that the spread of Ecoli 0157:h7, one of the most toxic of the large e.coli-family is directly related to the feeding of grain and concentrate mixtures. American scientists from Cornell-University in Ithaca together with experts from the Ministry of Agriculture came to the conclusion that there is a very simple method of stopping these dangerous bugs: feed the cattle hay and grass.7
When I started farming in the U.K. 30 years ago we hardly ever needed a veterinary surgeon on our bio-dynamic/organic farm, whilst every pharmaceutical company suggested itself as the ‘partner of agribusiness’. A mere 120 years ago there were no vets to speak of, the village priest in the rural districts of England had the occasional look at an animal that did not ‘feel right’. Those who believe that due to overwhelming evidence of sound farming the feeding of grain will discontinue errs: more than half of all grain (and soya-beans) in the world is fed to cattle. The grain-lobby is one of the most powerful in the world. It is more likely that the pharmaceutical industry comes up with yet another ‘solution’ to overcome these ‘problems’ (and create a few more problems on the way?). The feeding of grain makes nonsense of the argument that only industrial farming practises will feed the hungry. Why not convert the grain more efficiently directly into bread and convert the huge grain-fields not in use into pastures? As a practical farmer and with the mono-cultures that have evolved I know that this is a theoretical argument and therefore I maintain that we are faced not so much with an economic problem but with a cultural-social one. How to make the transition when almost the whole infrastructure that supports these insane practises needs to be transformed: veterinary ‘support’ systems, transport systems, subsidy practises, costing-systems, employment infrastructure, mechanisation, but above all a complete overhaul in our outlook of what a ruminant animal is? Then we can ask: is there a willingness to change course? The trust of the consumer has been shattered for obvious reasons. The farmer who is ‘caught’ with one cattle manifesting a priori, an ‘undigested’ protein, thought to be the cause for BSE (or is it the result?) in its brain, will have to get rid of his/her whole herd (in the E.U.). These cattle are being sacrificed on the altar of science that had its origin in the brain only and ended with the dissolving of the brain of the cow.
Intelligence is more than the collection of data, these data have to be arranged and supported by sound observation. Wisdom takes into account the spiritual dimension that underpins our practises and customs, folk-lore and behaviour. In these days of globalisation it is of course difficult to talk of a ‘folk-lore’, but if we are interested we will find in all cultures a veneration for the ruminant animal. It is a phenomena that to the extent that art has disappeared from the curricula of our schools, the sense for aesthetics which is more than the appreciation of music and paintings is being stifled. The feeding of animal-carcasses to cows is also an aesthetic question.
World trade has brought about also the globalisation of agricultural practises to the extent that the FAO tries to lay down the law of how and what to produce. The trend has been towards cheap and ‘safe’ food. That means that a ‘normal’ family in middle-Europe which used to spend 16,2% of their disposable income on meat, eggs and dairy products in 1965 and 9.2% in 1980 is spending today only 4.6% on the same amount of food which is produced by far less farmers than 1965.8 Nobody has yet added up the hidden costs, but with the first scare of BSE in Germany the consumption of beef dropped by a staggering 90%. The co-existence of urban and agriculture is under severe strain where there will be no winners. The present crisis could lead the way to an entirely new relationship of the urban population towards their ‘country-cousins’, a relationship that goes beyond ‘cheap’ food, where both country-folk and city-zens will realise that the economy that governs agriculture is qualitative different from the manufacturing economy. We have to accept that we are witnessing the ultimate bankruptcy of a cultural-(un)spiritual-social outlook on life, that started with the notion of the ‘survival-of-the-fittest’, which created the economic battlefields, and ended with the destruction of whole herds in Europe (with other continents to follow?). The suicide-rate amongst U.K.-farmers was one of the highest for any professional group when the BSE-crisis reared its ugly head.
(Picture of Mad Cow from Info3)
I want to believe that the observation of Rudolf Steiner regarding the ruminant does harmonise with our own if only we allow ourselves the peace and leisure to do so. If then out of such an observation we arrive at an ethic that will allow an animal to be what it needs to be – then, and only then can we speak of agri-culture again. This is far from being romantic – it will restore sanity in the widest sense, not only to our animals but in many beneficial ways also to the human race.
AFTER THE COMPULSORY CULLING AND BURNING OF 4 MILLION HEAD OF CATTLE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ‘TO ERADICATE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE’:
From ‘Fair Lady’, (South African Women’s magazine) April 11th 2001:
Is the disease fatal to animals?
No. Affected animals recover in two to three weeks, although younger animals may die as a result of secondary infection, exposure or malnutrition. FMD is hardly ever transmitted to humans and when it does, it is a mild infection which quickly passes. The meat from infected animals is fit to eat as long as it is properly cooked, allowing the heat to kill the virus.
Why destroy so many animals?
Infected animals loose their appetite and so produce less milk. It is economically nonviable to keep them alive. Even after the animal has recovered, it is still unable to produce as much milk or meat as it should for quite some time. The fierce price competition in the global export trade (now worth £395.4 million) means the rate at which animals give milk and meat is a matter of financial life and death. The farming industry risks financial devastation unless FMD is eradicated. (sic)
When did the ‘switch’ from traditional farming to ‘modern’ farming occur? This is a complex question as we are dealing with processes and gradual developments. But, like much in the last century, developments occurred in leaps, so much so that often we talk of watershed events. One such event was the discovery of the role played by nitrogen in the household of plant life. Justus Liebig, a German chemist, who made that discovery warned of the consequences of putting undue emphasis on nitrogen lest we neglect other factors. Then ‘in 1908 Fritz Haber developed what is today known as the Haber-Bosch process. Atmospheric nitrogen was reacted with hydrogen to form ammonia.
(Picture from chemistry book: Haber-Bosch process)
Today catalysts such as special mixtures of iron, potassium oxide and aluminium oxide are used to speed up the process. However temperatures of between 400 and 500 degrees Celsius and pressures of 200 to 600 atmosphere are required to harness the free gas into a liquid. Haber was supported by German industrialists, who wanted to convert the resulting ammonia to nitric acids, the starting material for making explosives. The principle that lies at the heart of a nitrogenous fertiliser is basically unchanged: a solidified ‘freedom loving’ element that grabs any opportunity to revert back to its free form. Here we have the effect of an explosive. Most explosives are made up of 50% ammonium nitrate. Nitrogen’s striving to remain free and independent takes on, within a compressed form, explosive tendencies. As ammonium nitrates, the nitrogenous salts (and therefore our modern fertilisers) are locked-up movement, held-in breath. Set free in the soil the nitrogen fertiliser commences a vigorous surge towards the atmosphere, back to its elemental form. Between 20 and 40% of the applied salts are “lost” in various forms, especially in dry and poorly drained soils. In its upward “explosion” it drags the plant with it, creating a diluted organic “bubble” in what is seen outwardly as vigorous growth.’ (Alexander Wildervanck, qualified chemical engineer and bio-dynamic farmer)9 What is described here is the allusion of growth. But it also hints at the temptation (or was it a calculated move?) to link farming to warfare (explosives). Only 6 years after Haber succeeded in his pursuit the First World War was unleashed. I purposefully do not speak about a co-incidence, or about an aside: chemical farming, as we know it today, is inextricably linked to warfare.
(Picture of trench warfare World War I)
It also laid the foundation for the chemical giants: corporations more powerful than any other. The foundations for this power were however laid in the 19th century that provided the philosophies and practises necessary for this expansion. Imperialism and capitalism combined with industrialisation provided a lethal mix that seemed to make wars inevitable. No wonder all industrial nations hung on to their ammonia producing capacities that even could inflate the growth of plants. The side-effects in terms of deficiencies in trace elements and plant diseases were conveniently taken on board as ‘negligible side-effects’. They by far outweighed the convenience of streamlined farming practises – as well as made up for the demands of the military establishments in all countries for ammunition.
It is remarkable how many of the philosophies of the 19th century have survived in the textbooks handed out to our children in schools. It describes Darwinism to be the most logical thing in the world. That it is a disputable viewpoint is not even mentioned. Likewise, who is taught that capitalism is one of many economic theories, that just happens to be the one practised today (to the detriment of the majority of the world-population)? The 20th century is the century of the unleashed powers and unbridled pursuits of an industry that has literally taken agriculture (as in husbandry) apart.
When a child is shown a modern farm today it will not encounter any longer husbandry, but a specialised pursuit of food-production. It may even come into touch with hydroponics, vegetable production that does not require a soil to speak of. The introduction of chemical fertilisers separated to a large extent animal husbandry from the production of crops. The symbiosis practised for thousands of years of plant and animal, the pastoral scene, evaporated further with every move of this industry ‘helping’ the farmer along to make his life more convenient – until it became an industry in its own right. Or can we say that agriculture was turned into an extension of the chemical industry?
IG FARBEN, the German chemical giant during the Hitler empire, that not only supplied fertilisers, drugs and ammunition to the German Reich but also the poisons, Zycklon B, used in the Concentration Camps to exterminate millions of human beings like insects (Zycklon B was a de-licing agent), was broken up by the Allies after World War II. In fact Auschwitz, the most horrific of all concentration camps, supplied IG FARBEN with slave labour, a labour force that was to be killed with the chemical giant’s own poison.10 It made good sense to dismantle the corporation considering the leading role that industry played in supporting Hitler’s aggression. But not even a generation later this industry reared its by now three heads again. BAYER, BASF and HOECHST are household names, not only in Germany but all over the world. All of them suggest to be and pose as partners in agri-business.
First it was the artificial fertiliser, then, because of plant disease, the herbicides, then, because of insect damage, the pesticides. Nobody asked: what is the reason for all this? Why the weak plants? What about the soil, tired after having been assaulted by the salts that bind the nitrogen? What about the humus layer, the microbial life having been extinguished after years of herbicide and pesticide use? What about the environment?
Few will know that ‘in 1881, a year before his death, Charles Darwin brought out a book, Vegetable Moulds and Earthworms, in which he made the statement that without worms vegetation would degenerate to the vanishing point. He estimated that in a single year more than ten tons of dry earth per acre passed through the digestive system of an earthworm and that in a field well populated with them one inch of topsoil would be created every five years. Darwin’s earthworm book mouldered on the shelf for fifty years before it was re-examined; even then his ideas did not enter the curricula of the agricultural schools. As a result, it is hardly appreciated that with heavy application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, a field can loose its entire earthworm population, so important for keeping it in a healthy condition.’ (Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird: ‘The Secret Life of Plants’, Penguin Books, Great Britain , 1975)
The ‘need’ for genetically modified plants is to make (some of) them resistant to herbicides and pesticides. At one time I was taught that you cannot drive out the devil with beelezebub. Hybridisation of plants has ended in a cul-de-sac as there is not much genuine seed material left in the world.
Before the onset of chemical farming (only 100 years ago) 50% of the population were involved with farming (in the western world). 200 years ago they were 75%. Today we are looking at 3 or 4% of the population being engaged in agriculture. This does not include the people in the supply-industry. It also does not include the people engaged in the packaging industry and those involved in removing the waste and pollution connected with our mode of food-production.
When farming and food-processing I also was involved for 10 years in carting our produce to the various shops in Cape Town during rush-hour traffic.
(Picture: congested highway into the city)
When crawling to town between 6 and 7 early in the morning and queuing for long hours at the receiving departments of the various stores I realised how much effort and energy goes into the supply of what is essentially a basic necessity. Most traffic in the literal and other sense is concerned with basic necessities like food (distribution), housing (builders and their materials) and clothing (textiles). I hardly dare asking the question: what if in our schools one were to teach basic skills in gardening, cooking, bricklaying and sewing? Would we not also reduce the traffic of accountants and office workers who have to administer the activities mentioned above? What actually has brought about the drift from the land into the cities where increasingly less people find work with all the consequences connected to unemployment?
China that is on a self-imposed path of consumerism away from state-capitalism (communism) is experiencing the alienation that is inherent in such a society: ‘Millions of Chinese city dwellers are shedding a past of poverty and collectivist social re-engineering for individuality. The dreary blues and greys of Chinese haberdashery have been supplanted by trim suits and dresses. … For the past five years, rural incomes as a percentage of urban incomes have been dropping. Farmers who once were the focus of national economic development policy, find themselves not merely neglected but actively disadvantaged. … (But) it is in the villages where poverty has become most entrenched. … For few rural residents does their country offer much promise of genuine improvement in their standards of living. Those trapped in this China face a future burdened with little education, subsistence employment and grinding poverty.’ (Sunday Independent, 18 August 2002) The drift into the cities from the country sides has already begun. When is it that also China’s cities are unable to absorb the ‘surplus’ people flocking into them? Is it really so desirable to emulate western nations and aim for a farming population of 3 to 4%? What about Africa whose industrial sector is in a less favourable position than China to absorb an impoverished rural population into an (underpaid) workforce in the cities?
REVEALING A LITTLE MYSTERY (ABOUT MILK)
(with appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Karl König)
(I grant that many readers may have a problem following some of the ‘mysteries’ as they presented themselves to me during my time as farmer and dairy-manager. At the same time I want to state that this was not written