“It is possible to feed the world population with organically grown food,” says Ueli Hurter, who is a biodynamic farmer and co-leader of the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum, adding that “it can be done if we farm organically, reduce the consumption of meat and get a grip on food wastage.”
Benno Otter is a biodynamic gardener. He and his team are looking after the Goetheanum gardens and parkland which cover around ten hectares of productive land where no pesticides have ever been used. One can do this, he says, if one respects a place without imposing something on it in order to force something out of it. “Doing the right thing in the right place means asking oneself: why should one grow wine here at the Goetheanum, if there are more suitable places for that elsewhere and if it requires more input than growing standard fruit trees?” Production and aesthetics, he thinks, can come together on the meadows. The mowing model used allows for the consideration of insects, people‘s recreational needs and winter feed for the cows.