Rudolf Steiner has put his ideal of making people aware of their place in the relationship between cosmos and earth 'on the ground' in the Agriculture Course. The Agricultural Course is a series of lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave in 1924 to more than a hundred anthroposophists, the majority of whom worked in agriculture themselves. They were concerned about developments in agriculture, including the use of fertilizers. The Agriculture Course forms the basis and the beginning of biodynamic agriculture.
while plant-life is to a high degree immersed in the general Cosmic life of Nature and also in its earthly surrounding. For this reason, we shall never acquire any real understanding of plant-life unless we realise that everything on earth is only a reflection of what takes place in the cosmos. This reflection is hidden in the case of man because he has emancipated himself. He carries within him only the inner rhythm. But the connection is still there in the highest degree in plants, and it is to this that I wish to direct your attention in this introductory talk.
THE AGRICULTURE COURSE, GA 327, Lecture I, 7 June 1924, Koberwitz.
In these first lectures, we shall bring together, from the field of knowledge of conditions which go to promote a healthy Agriculture, those which are necessary in order to enable us to reach certain practical conclusions which are to be realised in immediate application and which can only have significance when being so applied. To do so we have to enquire at the very outset how the products of Agriculture come into being and what is their connection with the Universe as a whole. Now a farm or agricultural estate comes to full expression as a ‘farm’ in the best sense of the word if it can be regarded as being a kind of separate individuality, a self-contained individuality. This is the condition to which every agricultural estate or farm should approach as near as possible, although it cannot be completely attained. In other words, everything that is needed to bring forth agricultural products should be supplied by the farm itself, which includes, of course, the necessary cattle and live-stock.
THE AGRICULTURE COURSE, GA 327, Lecture II, 10 June 1924, Koberwitz.
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