"A sustainable agriculture must be economically viable, socially responsible, and ecologically sound. The economic, social, and ecological are interrelated, and all are essential to sustainability. An agriculture that uses up or degrades its natural resource base, or pollutes the natural environment, eventually will lost its ability to produce. It’s not sustainable. An agriculture that isn’t profitable, at least over time, will not allow its farmers to stay in business. It’s not sustainable. An agriculture that fails to meet the needs of society, as producers and citizens as well as consumers, will not be sustained by society. It’s not sustainable. A sustainable agriculture must be all three – ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. And the three must be in harmony." - John Ikerd* University of Missouri UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING THE MULTI-DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE More papers by John Ikerd What is this Biodynamic Farming all about????? Not being a scientist, I am not quite sure where I should start, I feel that a piece of the puzzle has been left out; the whole basis of Biodynamic agriculture is Agronomy which is the study of Crop production and soil management, when you do not rotate crops you will loose certain nutrients in the soil, so you put in other crops that would replace the nutrients lost, leaving a field fallow used to be one way a farmer could attend with the health of the soil, plowing in organic material which in turn replace lost nutrients to the soil. Water management and pest control is also a big part of Agronomy down on the farm. Farmers have been farming for a long time; it was not until after world war two that farming practices started going more intense, no crop rotation, growing all the same crop, heavy machinery, high intense farming, more profit?? As far as I can see the jury is still out on this one, it is hard to compete with the research that Monsanto, cargill and ADM will give the press, they used to use hemp to fallow a field, from some of the things I have read it was one of the best ways to fallow a field, but we know now of the evils of hemp to society, so we are not allowed to use hemp any more. (Sarcasm). Sustainable Agriculture in my opinion is the basis of Organic farming and Agronomy is the basis of sustainable agriculture, the soils health is one of the most important things in farming, You can not continually pull food out of the soil and think that this process will last forever, one must put back what one pulls out. Chemical farming is like a drug addict, you need the methadone to get of the crack, but the methadone is not as bad as the crack, but the addict still can function some what normally. When you need to pump tones of fertilizers and chemicals into the field just to get some yield out of your crop you are in big trouble. This happens because the field is under huge duress, with intense farming you will plant the same crop, genetically altered to make profit for genetic companies not farmers, you need the fertilizers to grow, the pesticides to keep the bugs away, you have some serious addiction going on here. Remember DDT; it was OK to use after the war, then some light bulb went off in some ones head and they decided that it was bad for us, but the chemical companies did make their millions before it was disposed of, when will we learn that there is no easy way to farming. Today’s trends in farming in my opinion are smaller is better, more diversity on the farm, planting more crop varieties, saving seeds, finding more traditional genetic breeds in animals and plants, going back in history and learning what our ancestors did and why, taking their success of 100 of years of genetic natural selection, science in my opinion will never match the earths process of natural selection, she is way more objective in her selection of traits, not for profit, better transport or look, but survival, three years of drought will produce a heartier breed of plant, save the seeds of the plants that survive and you are on your way to a better farm. Now back to the Winery; those horns and shit, what are horns and shit made of? You have nutrients that the soil needs in those horns, somewhere along the way the wacky spiritual stuff got someone caught up in ritual, but I am sure that there is answers to all those wacky things like the moon and such. Science has answers for all of it. But we must be objective and farm not for straight profit but make it from the land; one can not control nature, only learn from it. Garbage in Garbage out stovetop Bioregionalism