Biodynamic Farming: Somewhere Between Science and Faith

“From dia­monds, noth­ing is born. From manure, flow­ers are born.”

At some point dur­ing our meet­ing, it felt nec­es­sary to use the words of a great Italian song­writer and poet to describe how good fruit can grow from a most nat­ural approach.

Such is the atti­tude of Massimiliano D’Addario, who earned three Gold Awards in a row at the NYIOOC with the mono­va­ri­etal Dritta L’Uomo di Ferro and a 2018 Gold with the blend Oliomania at this year’s World Olive Oil Competition. In addi­tion to being unfil­tered, another dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of these prod­ucts made at Marina Palusci farm in Abruzzo is they were made using bio­dy­namic farm­ing prac­tices.

The num­ber of farms that have imple­mented this ​“holis­tic, eco­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal approach to agri­cul­ture, gar­den­ing, food and nutri­tion,” as defined by the Biodynamic Association, has increased con­sid­er­ably in recent years. In Italy, bio­dy­namic farms have dou­bled to about 4,500 over the last decade in response to a grow­ing inter­est from both national and inter­na­tional con­sumers.

Farmers may apply for cer­ti­fi­ca­tions through pri­vate asso­ci­a­tions, of which the best known is Demeter. Nonetheless, the insti­tu­tional bod­ies noted the growth of this trend and the Italian Ministry of Agriculture devoted a chap­ter to bio­dy­namic farm­ing in the last National Strategic Plan for the devel­op­ment of organic farm­ing.

In broad terms, we can say that the bio­dy­namic method is based on a chem­i­cal-free agri­cul­tural approach with addi­tional require­ments. Organic com­pa­nies like the Gold Award-win­ning Villa Pontina say they ​‘eas­ily’ con­verted to this agri­cul­tural tech­nique, which is based on the spir­i­tual and anthro­po­soph­i­cal vision of the world devel­oped by Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner at the begin­ning of the last cen­tury.

An approach of this kind is what Massimiliano D’Addario per­formed at his Oliveto Pependone and in the adja­cent vine­yard where he pro­duces nat­ural wines. At Marina Palusci farm, in the province of Pescara, he man­ages 40 hectares (about 99 acres) of native vari­eties such as Dritta and Intosso, flanked by Leccio del Corno, Maurino, Frantoio and Leccino. Seven more hectares (about 7 acres) of Intosso were planted three years ago and will soon enter the pro­duc­tion phase.

“As we know, there are dif­fer­ent meth­ods of cul­ti­va­tion,” D’Addario said, refer­ring to con­ven­tional, inte­grated and organic farm­ing. ​“With regard to the envi­ron­men­tal impact, bio­dy­namic agri­cul­ture goes beyond these wide­spread meth­ods as it bans the use of treat­ments involv­ing syn­thetic chem­i­cals and pays close atten­tion to other issues such as the ori­gin of fer­til­iz­ers,” the pro­duc­ers said, clar­i­fy­ing that for exam­ple, he would never use an organic-cer­ti­fied com­post which comes from an urban area because it could con­tain mol­e­cules of dis­al­lowed sub­stances such as heavy met­als.

“The bio­dy­namic pro­ducer basi­cally refers to what our grand­par­ents used to do when chem­istry was not used in agri­cul­ture,” he observed. ​“They fol­lowed the phases of the moon and the sea­sons, rely­ing on their power of obser­va­tion of the plants and of the cos­mic ele­ments,” D’Addario explained, spec­i­fy­ing that in this vision the con­cept of soil vital­ity is fun­da­men­tal. Uncontaminated plants can grow free and lush.

“If a child has always been at home, on his first day of school with the other kids he is very likely to get sick because he is not used to liv­ing in that con­di­tions and could develop no anti­bod­ies,” he said metaphor­i­cally. ​“While a child who is free to play in the street, even in the rain, prob­a­bly rarely will get sick in the same con­text.” Likewise, with this approach plants are nat­u­rally strength­ened, as they absorb every­thing they need from the soil.

“Soil fer­til­ity and vital­ity can, and for me must be pro­moted with absolutely nat­ural means like the com­post from horn manure, shred­ding of prun­ing residues, and so on,” he pointed out. Moreover, among the var­i­ous prac­tices, it is cru­cial to fol­low the sun and lunar rhythms to carry out some oper­a­tions. ​“I waited for the right time to plant the youngest olive trees and get bet­ter results,” the pro­ducer observed, while we walked among beau­ti­ful and vig­or­ous plants of Dritta.

However, we can say that the most dis­tinc­tive and often con­tro­ver­sial bio­dy­namic prac­tices are the com­post and spray prepa­ra­tions which are based on veg­etable mate­ri­als includ­ing yarrow, chamomile, sting­ing net­tle, oak bark, dan­de­lion and valer­ian; min­er­als such as sil­ica and organic mat­ters, namely cow dung.

D’Addario explained that accord­ing to the bio­dy­namic vision, humans and ani­mals stand between heaven and earth, and there­fore humans can act as a link between these two worlds. The earth is immersed in the plan­e­tary spheres of the solar sys­tem and the plan­e­tary forces affect our planet and the mor­phol­ogy of plants.

The plan­ets also, directly and indi­rectly, influ­ence the flow of water on earth, while ele­ments such as humus are fun­da­men­tal for the fer­til­ity of soil. Then we can con­vey the cos­mic bond to the earth through the for­mu­la­tion and use of prepa­ra­tions.

The best known of these is prob­a­bly the Horn Manure, or Preparation 500, which should be made on a par­tic­u­lar night of the year. Cow horns are filled with manure (from ani­mals that are not chem­i­cally fed and treated). After a period of mat­u­ra­tion under­ground, a few grams of this com­post must be dis­solved in water and stirred based on the prin­ci­ples of dynamiza­tion; then you can spray the prepa­ra­tion on the soil.

As our farm­ers observed, ​“despite the effec­tive­ness of this method, only a few of these prac­tices, like the use of cer­tain sub­stances as fer­til­iz­ers and crop rota­tion, are sup­ported by research.” For the most part, bio­dy­namic appli­ca­tions have not yet been cor­rob­o­rated by sci­en­tific evi­dence and, for this rea­son, con­ven­tional pro­duc­ers often crit­i­cize the approach for lack­ing objec­tive foun­da­tions.

We spoke with Alessandro Piccolo, a pro­fes­sor of agri­cul­tural chem­istry at the Department of Soil, Plant, Environment and Animal Production at the University of Naples Federico II, who con­ducted stud­ies on bio­dy­namic prac­tices includ­ing an exam­i­na­tion of the prop­er­ties of Preparation 500.

“We con­ducted a study which pro­vided, for the first time, a sci­en­tific char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of this essen­tial prod­uct in bio­dy­namic agri­cul­ture,” said Piccolo. ​“Our results show that bio­dy­namic prod­ucts appear to be enriched with bio­la­bile com­po­nents and, there­fore, poten­tially con­ducive for plant growth stim­u­la­tion.”

He explained that the anaer­o­bic con­di­tions in which the manure is com­posted, after hav­ing been put in the horn and sealed, favor a lim­ited degra­da­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of lignin com­pared to aer­o­bic com­posts, which have an exu­ber­ance of bac­te­r­ial and fun­gal trans­for­ma­tion. In sub­stance, the con­tent of lignin in the Preparation 500 com­post is larger than that nor­mally found in aer­o­bic com­posts.

“This means that the polyphe­no­lic com­po­nent of Preparation 500 is on aver­age higher than that of a con­ven­tional com­post,” Piccolo pointed out, spec­i­fy­ing that polyphe­no­lic com­pounds power plant bios­tim­u­la­tion. On this basis, by sup­ply­ing com­post from Preparation 500 to plants, greater bios­tim­u­la­tion should be achieved, which there­fore means a greater effect of the com­post on both the micro­bial microflora of the rhi­zos­phere and the root sys­tem, thus a greater stim­u­la­tion of the plant phys­i­ol­ogy and bio­chem­istry. ​“Then, in gen­eral, this greater stim­u­la­tion due to the polyphe­nols of the Preparation 500, which has been sub­jected to less aer­o­bio­sis, favors both the micro­bial exu­ber­ance of the rhi­zos­phere and the increase in plant growth,” he noted.

“Biodynamics will go for­ward only if we sup­port objec­tively sci­en­tific research on these prod­ucts,” the researcher added. That is why his sug­ges­tion to bio­dy­namic pro­duc­ers is to seek con­tact with sci­en­tific insti­tu­tions to bet­ter under­stand the mol­e­c­u­lar com­po­si­tion of prod­ucts and their action on plants. ​“Otherwise, bio­dy­nam­ics will remain a trend and its ben­e­fits are likely to be lost, while there is still much to be dis­cov­ered,” Piccolo con­cluded.

Our bio­dy­namic pro­ducer thinks so too, as over the years he has seen the ben­e­fits from this approach on his farm.

Among three-year-old plants of Intosso, he sowed var­i­ous other types of crops accord­ing to the prac­tice of crop rota­tion. ​“As you can see, the olive trees are thriv­ing and healthy,” D’Addario observed, show­ing me young and lush olive trees under whose shade a flour­ish­ing meadow of field beans, mus­tard and oats grows. ​“I planted legumes, grasses and cru­cif­er­ous plants because they enriche the soil with dif­fer­ent sub­stances which are use­ful for the olive trees,” he explained. ​“We put life back at the cen­ter.”