Bacchus Gill - Grasp the nettle: making biodynamic farming & gardening work

Appendices

I feel special pleasure in writing a few lines to introduce this book and also to introduce the author. Peter Proctor leads an ordinary grihastra life surrounded by most of the worldly cares and responsibilities. He possesses a healthy body with an absolutely unassuming exterior. He has wedded spirituality to environmental and ecological farming.

His mission at this age of 68 years is to enlighten and train the farming communities , especially the youth of east and west alike. Peter has worked hard to promote biodynamic agriculture in Asian countries since 1993, and I feel he is having tremendous success in his endeavours.

I was given training in biodynamic agriculture by Peter in Hawkes Bay in New Zealand in 1993, and since then I have worked with him and his colleagues in New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh and India, to popularise biodynamic farming. Now Peter has adopted India as his second home and spends two to three months a year there, from south to north, from the Arabian Sea coast to the great Himalayas.

His role as a teacher is important it can never be overemphasised that it is the efficacy of the system and the calibre of the guru or teacher that count, and a mistake in the selection of these may render all effort in vain.

Grasp the Nettle is a treatise on the biodynamic agriculture system, and it deserves to be studied with close attention by those interested in spiritual, sustainable farming or ahimsakkheti (non-violent agriculture). One of the main objectives of biodynamics is to realise the truth depicted in the natural farming of the ancient sages and Veda, Upanishad and other scriptures of the Indian subcontinent.

To know the historical and philosophical background of a movement is to know something substantial about its validity and potential effectiveness as well as why it advocates what it does. Biodynamic agriculture or farming is an ecological, self-supporting farming system rather than an industrial or chemical approach to the production of food. It has no adverse environmental effects and it promotes soil enrichment, conservation and construction. Soil is viewed as a complex and living entity and is considered the prime capital and wealth of the farmer.

Dr Rudolf Steiner in 1924 described what is now known as biodynamic agriculture, a new way of thinking about the relationship of the earth and the soil to the forces of the cosmos. He pointed out how the health of the soil, plants, animals and human beings depends upon bringing nature into connection with the cosmic creative shaping forces.

This book, Grasp the Nettle, is an attempt to present this knowledge in a way that should help the practitioner make biodynamic farming and gardening work. The chapters on observation of plants and their forms can introduce the reader to many other ways of furthering his awareness of plant life on the farm.

Peter bases his knowledge on a lifetime of gardening and farming, and in particular working at the Hohepa Homes in Hawkes Bay. He has brought the biodynamic concepts to many, many people, in temperate and in tropical countries.

This volume should be kept in the libraries of all those who are interested in practising holistic farming.

I wish every success and a healthy long life to the author to serve the world in the twenty-first century.

TGK Menon
Rural Agricultural Education Coordinator
Indore
January 1997