Лекция, прочитанная Алексом Подолинским на ежегодном общем собрании Биодинамической сельскохозяйственной ассоциации Австралии в 1981 г.

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Мне никогда не задают этот вопрос прямо, хотя подчас я могу прочесть его в ваших глазах; however it has come down the grapevine, namely the question: why has Алекс done and is doing what he is in regards to farming and farmers? Or in some other areas, as is known to some of you? Мне кажется, I should say something to this.

Несколько лет тому назад there was, similarly, the question in the air, зачем необходимо ежегодное опрыскивание «пятисотым» and even once the soil has so obviously got going? Тогда я дал ответ на этот вопрос в трёх своих последних лекциях. Так что попробую to give an answer also this time and would like to extend this question beyond just asking in my direction. That side can be answered very quickly. For a long time I didn't even know that I was doing such things. I never considered it. I was just primed or impulsed to do it. Nobody asked me. Perhaps, if someone had asked me and I had stopped long enough to consider it, I would have said, well, we see all the negative things going on around us. We are responsible to Nature and Man. We bemoan how the soil is dying and how people are being fed and so on. Furthermore, we bemoan pollution. When we started here, pollution wasn't much discussed. You've never heard me moan much about pollution. This doesn't do any good. We do something and so, for reasons of such nature, do I feel it necessary to do something. But I started without even considering that. One just realises something has to be done and is urged to do it, it's like an impulse.

That's as far as I'm concerned. But then comes the extension. That is, the overall aim of our Association and our working together. And there I would like to bring a number of points to consideration — in preparation for what we have to discuss during this conference in regard to the marketing of биодинамических продуктов, выращенных в Австралии, overseas, and the further development of such marketing here in Australia.

Regarding our Association, you know that it is by far the largest of its kind on earth as far as actual land that is being worked and number of farmers associated, and production of edible goods is concerned. В отличие от других биодинамических или органических объединений, наша ассоциация — apart from the City Home Gardeners branches клуба садоводов — состоит почти entirely of bona fide owner-operator primary producers. И в отличие от прочих организаций, члены которых на земле работают мало, зато имеют свои конторы, издают периодику и рекламную литературу, наше объединние не такое.

В Западной Германии, где работает вторая по величине биодинамическая организация (which in some ways functions very well and in others, perhaps, not quite so), there is по нашим меркам, невероятное количество биодинамических консультантов на кучку фермеров, которых они консультируют. The trend is for these advisers to be, more and more, выпускниками сельскохозяйственных факультетов. Насколько я понимаю, not many come from farms at all — just like выпускники сельскохозяйственного факультета у нас don't usually come from the land. They are trained conventionally and they are trained Bio-Dynamically. В европейских университетах защищается не так уж много диссертаций, которые имеют отношение к биодинамике. I would certainly look very carefully as to what such graduates really do know, as knowledge зависит so essentially от реального опыта. Во всяком случае этим консультантам нужно платить. Нужно сказать, что деньги там выделяются is more readily available over there than у нас. Школы Рудольфа Штайнера на 80% покрывают свои текущие расходы за счёт правительства. So also does the Bio-Dynamic organisation there receive substantial субсидии из различных источников. И, как мне рассказывали, a good deal of the operational costs of their объединения comes from the percentage taken of what farmers produce для своей оганизации «Деметра», которая сертифицирует качество продукции, как и мы в Австралии.

В Германии население в среднем is much more conscious of better class food, чем у нас в Австралии. We are all the time preparing and lecturing to consumers, and it is a good deal better than it was ten or twenty years ago in this regard. Тем не менее, требование к качеству у нас всё ещё отстаёт от far behind the average demand немецких покупателей.

So they have got quite a demand and they can organise readily, whereas here our growers in the early days found it difficult to actually find a market for the high quality Bio-Dynamic produce they grew.

Рынки в Германии также расположены close by where the produce is grown, в то время как расстояние, транспортные расходы и проблемы у нас are major concerns. One could say that the overall organisation в Германии is to quite some degree run along обычного бизнес-предприятия. Growers are under contract to Bio-Dynamic organisations and percentages levied on their gross sales pays for organisation и консультантов.

By contrast, our organisation does not operate within таких обычных рамках, and yet we are a much larger organisation than any other. And so we should consciously look at how ours actually functions. Also why it functions as it so does.

Когда меня попросили прочесть первые лекции по биодинамике, я уже семь лет занимался developing этого метода to make it suit Australian conditions and large acreage farming generally, bearing in mind today's economy of manpower and equipment. То, как тогда в разных уголках Земли The way Bio-Dynamics was then practised was practical only for для небольших участков and not under commercial conditions. К примеру, идея о том, что «пятисотый» следует применять только после compost, которую вы найдёте в одной из книг Пфайффера, would rule биодинамику out in farming в Австралии. Quite the contrary, one had to experience that the soil in Australia is crying out for 500 as the first, the 'cow-power', mentioned в ряде наших лекций and the courage had to be found to throw overboard a number of established theories and to begin anew. So much had to be developed and is under development at present — in which many of you have in fact been actively engaged. It was not all done by me, I just started it off and it was widened out from there.

When we had had the first few lectures and then had about eighteen farmers starting, они немедленно захотели создать объединение. Я тогда заявил, что занят другими делами, и только год спустя, когда насчитывалось уже порядка тридцати заинтересованных фермеров, многие из которых правильно применяли биодинамический метод и получили первые результаты, мы объединились скорее на неформальном уровне, as all the farmers who had started naturally associated with each other. We certainly didn't start an association, as is not uncommon, especially also in idealistic agricultural endeavours, that arose in the head of someone. Our association grew like a plant. Furthermore, and most importantly, there was, in this freely coming together, each most definitely from his own choice, trust in each other, perhaps, I should say, especially trust in me and my experience with Nature. It was quite obvious that I was not in it ради денег. I was also not trying to sell any particular, supposedly new, plough, which was being held up as a 'complete new farming' method. И препарат 500 за двадцать центов на акр, which it has remained ever since, is also obviously no money spinner.

I have in fact discouraged as many as are in our association from joining — to make sure that the right ones, really desiring it, would join. And quite a number of you, in your districts, have acted similarly. We've actually never knocked anyone back. We've sometimes given them a good chance to forget what they may have all too lightly heard — say, as a success story — so that they could be sure of their motivation.

So моей целью было to make every farmer independent, in as much as he grows into observing and assessing, thinking about, experiencing and understanding nature, and making his farming decisions therefrom. This is an utterly necessary base for биодинамики. And as, at first a number, and continuously more, have become able in all this, they have grown to being advisers of new ones in their own districts and types of farming pursuits. You all know only too well that only knowledge won from the background of real experience is truly worthwhile. Вы только смеётесь at the advice of традиционных, закончивших свои университеты консультантов, головы которых забиты териями of statistical weight, lacking in insight. Современные австралийские фермеры actually have a very good grasp of all the basics of the агрономии these graduates learnt at universities. There isn't really that much in it, if you sort through it with understanding. And some of this we fit into our considerations. So your advising is rather complete.

To make this a little more clear, позвольте мне привести следующий пример: на днях я встречался с гражданским инженером, who can work out design and stresses of steel structures etc. and knows all pertaining theories and rules. But this man couldn't weld and had no practical relationship to the materials he was working with на бумаге. Вот такие есть инженеры в области сельскохозяйственных технологий. И они не изобретают ничего нового. Это изначально делается самими фермерами, которые, скажем, обрабатывают землю, observe what happens and, eventually, see what could or should happen and so design and make a new plough out of the oneness of практического опыта. Both must come together. В философии это называется монизмом — в противовес дуализму.

Вы никогда особо не доверяли агроному, получившему только традиционную подготовку. Вы понимали, что он не может run your farm. Many saw how thin the sphere of even his theories was. Практически то же самое происходит и в других отраслях науки, but this is kept hidden in justification of those pursuing such.

Но в этом зале у нас присутствует порядочное количество по-настоящему талантливых инженеров. Они не изучали инженерное дело, но, пожалуй, in worthwhile theory, знают поболее многих инженеров-проектировщиков. Они научились этому through doing it with consciousness, through finding problems, studying where necessary and searching for solutions, and then making what was required. There are quite a number in this room to whom I look for inspiration towards the development of new general agricultural техники или специального биодинамического оборудования. And how much of such has already been developed here.

And only from the basis of monism, подлинного знания, can anyone sort out which theoretical knowledge is worthwhile at all. And in the end you actually know more of this theory than the engineer who once studied so ardently because he forgot most of it as it was never used by him. Whereas what you picked up gradually built up like a tree and is all useful.

In all areas of human conscious endeavour there is a great deal of detail to be known. But only those working in a segregated, specialised way need know of it and can truly so know it. In general it is important to have the capacity to develop living knowledge.

This capacity in regard to agriculture you are encouraged to develop in the training within our Association. And the only real advisers, in my opinion, are those who have grown that way. And this really then works.

Now this doesn't yet answer the aspects of the original question — почему же Алекс всем этим занимается? — meaning without taking a fee for it. In the very early days (I haven't heard it said for some twelve years) there was something referred to as the 'Bio-Dynamic spirit'. Вы помните это выражение. It arose sometimes in regard to money. 'The Bio-Dynamic spirit' and Ray, in those days, was the finance manager the Association members organised to see that I and my fellow executives would receive sufficient money to carry on with.

Now, you see, in all of this development, first from me to you, then from you on to the next one, there is actually a lot of money involved. If you had to pay for that advice — when there were still plenty of private agricultural consultants, their fee, years ago, was never less than $300 в год. And what was the value of their advice in contrast to the value of ours? There is a lot of money involved. And for some of you, now, there is quite a lot of your time involved — for those of you who are really acting as advisers — and where people visit your farm or you have to assess theirs.

In my experience this has worked very well. And as little as I have ever complained, have I heard anyone else do so. It has been a service we have grown to respect and to be glad to be able to give. In fact, we would not like to lose being able to serve, if you consider it. And it is not a do-gooder kind of service which would bring a moralistic medal.

If you consider more deeply — say you didn't have Bio-Dynamics as a viably developed method — where would a lot of us now be; this includes me; where would we be with our farming? It is not a very nice prospect to have to suddenly use poisons again or to jeopardise the future of one's land instead of feeling well with your days work in the evening. I think we have more young people on our farms than I see generally. Many young people are disillusioned with trends тадиционного земледелия.

So there is a tremendous amount we all must be very grateful for. It is hard to express this in money. And the way we have grown and developed, money has not come into it other than to make possible what is developing. That is the crucial point.

Now I will just look at the same from another side. I would claim that one of the major reasons why we are farming is that we want to be free from having a cup of tea when the whistle goes and having a boss over our head in a factory etc. В нашей стране нет таких классовых различий, как в Старом Свете. Всё равно определённые классовые различия присутствуют. But there is something in that you have a special sense of being your own boss. You are free and not employed. It is not a pride. Some, in these bad years, have had to go out and work. It was taken, generally taken well. One expected it to not last permanently. One took it on as a yoke though — kind of. Independent farmers are workers but not labourers. You will know what I mean by this.

What I want to picture is that when you go out to work — look, to work is not shameful, the opposite — but there is a great difference between being free in it and somehow or other not being quite free.

If you look at people working in factories or in general employment, they are actually paid for their human contribution. They are paid like I would pay for this ash tray here, if I smoked. They are paid exactly the same way. This costs so much and my labour per hour costs so much. That is the essential point here. Namely, that when humans are paid in general industry, they are paid like goods are paid for. And one must carefully consider that.

Now there is one of the various activities Рудольф Штайнер was instrumental in — like биодинамика, education, медицина и практически все all human fields of endeavour — and this is the area dealing with the social sphere and there he actually said, it is immoral to pay a human being like one pays for goods. At that moment the human being is degraded.

You take on the hardship of farming and this is particularly so in the harsh Australian environment. Многие из вас владеют землями of such value that if you sold out and invested the money you could loaf along very comfortably. Но от этого вы не станете счастливее. Быть может, вы даже would feel guilty. And so you go on what some would consider to be slaving, working much harder and longer than people who are employed, because in your free choice you prefer it so. You want to work and make a contribution. After becoming Bio-Dynamic farmers you realise this contribution is for present man and the future of Earth. The background motivation however is that you wish to be free and not paid for as a slave.

There you actually sense in your own lifestyle and in your own outlook — though you may not be conscious of it — this essential point Рудольф Штайнер made.

Some of you have come across some of the more theoretical Bio-Dynamic books from overseas and you realise had they been your first contact with Bio-Dynamics you would have said, I can't farm that way. Similarly would it often be, had you first come in contact with some theoretical writings in the area of Rudolf Steiner's social impulse. К примеру, если бы я сейчас встал и сказал, что человекаman should not be paid for his work; well, that would sound rather impractical and like Utopia. How then should he be paid?

But if you look at the working of our Association — without me at the time realising it or at all thinking about it, I can assure you that I only woke up to it much later — our Association grew and developed in this way. I wish to draw this to your attention at this stage as it has gradually come to my consciousness.

And I must then also point to further factors. Had I in fact from the beginning operated in the Bio-Dynamic method, but basically along the commercial lines, как это делают привычные консультанты по сельскому хозяйству, I would have 'directed' you, а вы «покупали» бы мои услуги as indeed the odd businessman-farmer предложил мне «гонорар» in the early days when у меня не хватало денег. But, led by only instinct then, я отказался. You would then not have entered the 'Bio-Dynamic spirit'. You would not have become a free participant in the further developments. You would not have grown to being an adviser yourself and so much more. We developed ever so much better for staying free and have become by far the largest organisation of people really helping agriculture and man's food supply. We produce millions and millions of dollars worth of food per year and the human advisory, planning etc., activities between us all expressed in money would amount to many tens of thousands of dollars per year. And yet it would make us 'reckon' and feel tight and wouldn't work. But also think how much money we would have to contribute to сейфы Налогового управления! Вот уж действительно можно посмеяться.

It is good to be conscious of what we have and what we have to keep alive. Not that I have so far seen any danger of us not doing so.

Perhaps I should express the following in more detail. When in the early days such businessman retainers were instinctively refused, it also occurred that I sometimes visited one farmer's neighbour and not that farmer. I was, and am, and so are all of you, free to visit where I choose. And my choosing depended on what a particular farmer had done apart from only talking about it. I carefully ascertained this. There was good medicine in such as, essentially, I of course wish each one to progress.

We must be able to function thus in whatever sphere our work lies. You have this freedom as farmers. Human dignity requires such for everyone. And it is not easy to keep this freedom if something grows very large.

You are free as farmers to choose такой метод хозяйствования, какой you wish to pursue. Министерство сельского хозяйства has tried дискредитировать биодинамику, но вынуждено было отказаться от этих попыток.

I will just take a few more minutes to explain the following further, although it hasn't directly to do with Bio-Dynamics. It is interesting and valuable for you to know, because sometime or other we shall come near to it.

I said, if we really expressed the services exchanged between us in money, this would come to a very considerable amount. Added to this would have to be the increase in value of your properties and nett income due to Bio-Dynamics and in particular the fact that your земли have gained a definite future, whereas so many conventionally run places will sink as more and more chemicals have to be applied. Плодородные земли, на которых можно выращивать edible and exportable продукты питания, сокращаются. Our farms will show up more and more and increase in value.

В своих социальных указаниях Рудольф Штайнер stipulates a clear-cut demarcation between областью права и правительства, между коммерческой стороной и тем, что можно назвать назвать духовной стороной, наример, образованием.

Большая часть проблем, скажем, в современной системе образования is that the law — government side — interferes with the freedom of the teachers, education, spiritual work. Есть люди, которые учились, чтобы стать преподавателями. And they have to put down a month in advance what they are going to teach on that day. It's like you being told what to do в понедельник в 10 часов утра on your farm without any notice being taken what then the weather is going to be like etc. In teaching, I can assure you, there are factors exactly similar to your weather interferences. On a calm day the children are also calm. On a north wind day they are a crabby lot and you have to use quite different methods' and you have to be free to develop this, and likewise in many other spheres.

Если бы учителям дали свободуIf teachers were given the freedom, the human dignity of their profession, they could gradually grow to exercising the corresponding responsibility. After all they are the only ones — after teaching the children — who really can and should assess the child's abilities in place of 'government: set computerised exams.

We have a similar situation in commerce, which also should be free. We should have free marketing according to supply and demand as to a degree is still practised in the Рынке королевы Виктории в Мельбурне. Then immediately quality would show up. This vanishes in the pool of generalisations in government-run commerce where, say, the government doesn't want Bio-Dynamic's quality produce to show up the poison residues and lack of flavour and food value in 'average' produce.

So we have the three spheres merged in a disorderly way and suffer for it. These examples are the barest hint only. They are also a preparation to our marketing which will come up later during this conference.

The amount of money which could be added together from all our Bio-Dynamic activities, as mentioned above, this can be expressed in money, and it is along these lines that we undertake our various activities, like school, curative home, the associated buildings, etc., etc. And one must therefore create what I call 'free money'. We've done it in our Association, only without expressing it in money.

With the school one had to start somewhere and you know из лекции 8, how the money for much of the kindergarten was raised. The basic design for that multi-storey block took only three hours time; however, this was based on my life's work with the light-force as architect of plants and in nature. Then we could borrow enough to build the other three classrooms. After, then, the children of the original parents had attended the school for two years and the parents had had the chance to experience the effect of this education — A1 method — like you of Bio-Dynamics на ваших фермах — we called for a general meeting re the financing of further buildings. At this time we still had two classrooms built ahead and available for the coming two years' requirements. The parents called in expert accountants, who suggested the usual co-operative scheme, which would borrow an enormous sum from banks at the usual interest rate. Parents then agreed to this, i.e. to service that debt additionally to the existing school fees. The total of both fees together is still lower than the fees of other private schools. I then suggested that we should not go for such a scheme, but that parents should pay the agreed amount from that moment. By three years' time, when a new classroom was required, we would have saved enough to build it without going into debt at all. All they paid would go straight into buildings, and not over 90% of it into bank coffers as interest of our serfdom to the bank. With the thus created 'free money' we have continued to build. And each activity has aided the other as required. This in fact is pooling of mutual finance, fully in the sense of a mutual-aid banking operation. The extra the parents — in full freedom and understanding of the value to their children — agreed to pay was really a gift as far as the commercial exchange was concerned, but it came from a free spiritual decision. This is akin to the spiritual morality and responsibility to Man and Earth of our Bio-Dynamic co-working and the commercial value of our co-advising work, which we do not express in detail in dollars.

In such a way free money is created. At that moment a bank for school affairs started. Money was assembled from various sources for a purpose. We have proceeded similarly for the curative home-farm and for other activities. I would like you to be conscious, however, that this way of free money and bank operation is very different from creating группы давления любого типа, monetary or physical — because of numbers — like a union or professional group can, ill-directed, become. In this there is no free morality. Сама мотивация эгоцентрична. Respective people have to be members.

Monetary contributions for a free bank can come from organisations of free co-workers as described or from individuals, которые готовы помочь. They may make a certain sum they don't need interest on, for a period (it may even be interest 'lost' in taxation), available to start a new activity off, until it stands on its own feet and in turn can help others. Technically then such amount can stay in that person's bank, but authority for it is given to the signatories of our bank. Of course, donations can be received from individuals etc.

What I am proud of with all our activities is, that in spite of their size, we have as yet nowhere even one full-time office worker. (I know some of you moan over my hurried handwriting.) Such overheads must be cut down to the minimum, or the devil gets in. We have only informal and brief business meetings, as you well know. Common sense and management capacity of everyone prevails and therewith trust in each other's independent judgement.

Accountants tend to so over-organise that they befuddle the business owner to the point where the accountant has established himself as indispensable. This is akin to government machinery and, whilst no-one likes it, no-one can do anything about it once it's got in. In our Association and other work areas we show how one can function without this.

ЛЕКЦИЯ 12

«ИНДИВИДУАЛЬНЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ФЕРМЫ»

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