Successful participation in the Demeter course
The trip to more knowledge can sometimes necessitate a flight of more than 10 hours: Volker Schmidt, our agricultural engineer in the Dominican Republic, visits a Demeter-introduction course held on the Dottenfelder farm in Bad Vilbel, Germany in March.
And it was an exciting course: a large number of speakers gave practical and theoretical demonstrations in the five-day training course dealing with soil fertility, organic methods of growing fruit and vegetables, breeding, preparations, animal husbandry appropriate for the breed of animal, how to go organic as well as the awareness of food quality. The course was rounded off with the future outlook for the Demeter association.
Volker Schmidt was very much taken with the manner in which an attempt was made to keep farm animals as they should be kept on the Demeter model operation. The laying hens, for example, are kept in a hen mobile which is towed by tractor to different parts of a field in rotation as necessary. The calves have daily contact with their mother cow and are not separated from her straight away after feeding as is standard practice in current dairy cow husbandry. They do not have to go without their mother’s milk either. In anthroposophical agriculture, animals are treated as fellow creatures which form a very natural part of the farmyard fraternity. They make a contribution to soil fertility with their manure and in the final analysis, recycling their waste. That is why, in contrast to all other organic associations, Demeter insists upon animal husbandry being an integral part of organic farming – normally this means cows.
Volker Schmidt intends to apply his new-found knowledge on a 15-hectare banana plantation in the Dominican Republic which is in the process of being converted to run in accordance with Demeter principles. He is the person to contact for questions concerning the production, storage and application of the organic preparations. The situation on the tropical island is quite different to here in Europe, since farming to Demeter standards is still a leading edge development. There are only a few growers over there working to Demeter directives. In addition to this, it is a challenge to adjust the principles of organic farming to the tropical climate. In the tropics there are, for example, no seasons as we know them in Europe.
Consequently, farming there has a different rhythm to the one which is determined by the four seasons.
Information about Dottenfelder Hof:
Dottenfelder-Hof, is a farm of some 150 hectares or so located north of Frankfurt-am-Main, managed by a collective to strict Demeter criteria. The land on the site of the farm has been used for agricultural purposes for more than a thousand years and today it is a pioneer in agricultural matters.
Tags: Bananas (GB), demeter (GB), Dominican Republic (GB), Volker Schmidt (GB)
