In order to guarantee humanity‘s food supply we need plans for dealing with climate change, promoting biodiversity and improving soil fertility. Biodynamic agriculture works from multiple perspectives on a sustainable resilience by including the living world and the co-creating human being.
Being locked down, teaching children at home and working from home can be very stressful. In February the Goetheanum offers an online course with practical inspiration for becoming creative and feeling more in charge. The programme focuses on dialogue and self-activity.
The Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum has set itself the aim for everyone to be able participate in the biodynamic agricultural and food culture and help to develop it. This assumes access to high-quality seed, a sound training and an environment that enables organic agriculture.
Young children are highly sensitive and develop their personality through interactions with and impressions absorbed from their environment. Because of this interaction and because child development at this early age is crucial for later life, the protection of childhood is an essential task.
Because children and adolescents spend much of their time in educational settings, the spatial, conceptual and social make-up of these places will affect their health right into adulthood. According to the paediatrician Michaela Glöckler it is therefore crucial that they facilitate healthy development.
The European Alliance of Initiatives for Applied Anthroposophy (Eliant) advocates cultural diversity and choice in Europe. Its petition for an age-appropriate use of digital technology ‘For a Right to Screen-free Day Care Centres, Kindergartens and Primary Schools’ will run until the end of the year. Eliant has recently become a partner of the World Goetheanum Association.
The Annual General Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society was held at the Goetheanum on 31 October in compliance with the currently required protective restrictions. The members confirmed the appointment of Ueli Hurter as a member of the Executive Council, approved the 2019 financial statement and discharged the Executive Council.
In 1924 Rudolf Steiner initiated biodynamic farming with a lecture course in Koberwitz (now: Kobierzyce, Poland). A new German edition of the course is planned for its one hundredth birthday. The Section for Agriculture and the Rudolf Steiner Archives are calling for source materials and photos.
As a result of the Covid-19 epidemic, awareness of the connection between personal health and ecologically produced food has grown. Jasmin Peschke, nutritional scientist at the Goetheanum, thinks that this awareness can inspire greater respect for the dignity of living creatures.
Changes to the Pedagogical Section‘s leadership will be gradually introduced during 2021/2022. With Philipp Reubke, the perspective of early childhood education will for the first time be directly represented, while Constanza Kaliks will bring in her experience from South America. The two present Section leaders will take on new tasks.
On classic financial balance sheets, social and ecological achievements merely appear as expenses, a fact that puts sustainably run enterprises at a disadvantage compared to others. Christian Hiss has developed a concept that assesses the positive sides of sustainable business approaches.
The Limbua Macadamia Group started off as a pioneer in establishing small-scale farming cooperatives. In the video series ‘Living Farms’, Lin Bautze (project leader) and Philipp Wilson (camera) from the Goetheanum‘s Section for Agriculture explain the group‘s biodynamic approach.