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Studying the benefits

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An ambitious new study looks at nutrient-dense food production in New Zealand.
The content below is free to read from our Nov-Dec 2023 issue. This article is sponsored by Kete Ora Trust.

What is the best food we can eat for good human health? How is it grown and produced? What connections do New Zealanders make between the food they eat and how it is grown?

Many growers and their customers believe biodynamic and organically-grown food has specific health benefits. Kete Ora Trust is undertaking research here in Aotearoa New Zealand that compares the nutrient density of food produced in biodynamic, organic, and non-organic systems respectively. It will also investigate consumer perceptions of these different foods.

This is world-class research, firmly evidence-based, that will review and build on a handful of studies done around the world over the past 30 years. Kete Ora has commissioned Plant & Food Research Rangahau Ahumāra Kai to carry out three distinct stages of enquiry.

A review of existing studies will identify research gaps, which will inform applied research into specific topics. Kete Ora Trust is funding the first two areas of research and will invite co-sponsors for the third stage.

Picual olives biodynamically grown
Above: Picual Olive – ripe fruit on tree.

Why biodynamics?

Ask the people who grow biodynamic food, and those who search it out to buy it, and they’ll tell you about the full, rich flavour of the fruit and vegetables, its resistance to disease and how well it keeps. “Biodynamic food has vitality,” says Dieter Proebst, one of New Zealand’s most experienced biodynamic growers and consultants. “And that vitality is imparted to the people who eat it.

“Biodynamics treats the soil, the crops, and the animals gently. There are no tricks used to produce a crop. As an apple grower, I sought to bring out what the winemakers call terroir, the expression of all the unique characteristics of where and how that food was grown.”

Ross Vintiner of Dali Estate in Martinborough is a Kete Ora trustee and careful steward of an organic and biodynamic grove of 1100 olive trees. He’s been instrumental in establishing this research project. Ross has won major international competitions with his olive oils, which have very high levels of polyphenols, a micronutrient that helps fight diseases like cancer and heart disease. Dali’s customers pay a premium for oils of this quality.

In a biodynamic system – whether growing crops or pasture on which livestock graze – the health of the soil is inextricably linked with the health of the food it produces. The percentage of soil organic matter is a key measure of soil health. With its teeming microbial life, organic matter is vital for the transfer of nutrients between soil and plants and from there to animals, humans included. High organic matter and high microbial biomass correlate to nutrient-dense food.

Ross credits providing nutrition for soil life plus foliar feeding for significant gains in yield and quality. He doubled the kilograms of fruit, and litres of oil per tree over a five-year period, coinciding with doubling his soil’s organic matter content. In a tough drought-stricken year, when other olive growers had virtually no fruit, Dali Estate still brought in a good harvest. “That was thanks to high organic matter and an abundant leaf canopy, both resulting from careful mineral, microbe, moisture, and tree management,” says Ross.

Diverse sward under the Dali Estate olive trees.
Above: Instead of a herbicide-drenched dead zone under the canopy, as is usual in conventional systems, there’s a prolific and diverse sward under the Dali Estate olive trees, protecting the soil, providing habitat and food for pollinators and beneficial insects, and increasing production.

Urgent action required

On North American farmland today, soil organic matter levels are only half of what they were at the time those lands were converted from forest and prairie into farming. Modern non-organic farming practices, particularly cultivation and the use of chemical fertilisers, have decreased and degraded soil organic matter and the life it contains. In many industrialised farming systems, soil organic matter is often as low as one percent: it should be above seven.

At the same time, measures of the nutrient density of food grown in the US show a decline of forty percent since the 1940s. It’s likely similar in most Western nations given common agricultural practices. This is despite vastly more investment in farming intensity, chemical fertilisers, and machinery during this period.
There’s a lot at stake, so gathering accurate and up-to-date global data about the impact and consequences of different production systems is vitally important. Two local production studies done in the 1990s demonstrated biodynamic and organic soils have higher biological and physical qualities compared to non-organic practices. (Physical qualities include the levels of soil organic matter, microbial activity, soil structure and root symbiosis, permeability, topsoil, and diversity.) Additionally, biodynamic and organic farms use less inputs and energy and produce less erosion and pollution.

These and other studies showed that the nutrient content of crops produced in biodynamic and organic systems varied, although compared with non-organic production, they had higher nutrient content the majority of the time.

Kete Ora’s research aims to answer questions, such as:

  • What is a high nutrient-dense food? Why are high nutrient-dense foods beneficial to human health?
  • Is there a difference, and if so, what is the difference in the nutrient and phytochemical content of foods grown using biodynamic methods compared with organic and conventional?
  • Which compounds are influenced to a greater degree by growing practice (micronutrients, macronutrients, phytochemicals)?
  • What nutrients are inputted and produced in biodynamic systems, compared to organic and non-organic systems?
  • Does the microbial biomass of living soil in biodynamics, organics, and conventional growing systems influence the nutrient density of food produced?
  • What crops respond best to biodynamics with respect to nutrient content?
  • Which nutrients do consumers care the most about?
  • What do consumers understand about biodynamics, compared to organic and conventional growing systems? What value do consumers place on biodynamic and organic food, compared with conventional food?

Kete Ora’s trustees hope answering these and other questions will assist consumers, growers and policy makers to make best choices for healthy food from the best growing systems.

More reading

More in-depth information can be found on Kete Ora’s website, including the need for the project, the questions the research seeks to answer, and details about previous scientific studies into this area.
keteora.nz/stories/research-project-launched/
Dali Estate: daliolives.co.nz
RNZ profile of Dali Estate: bit.ly/3sGNrAQ
Dieter Proebst: treedimensions.co.nz

Kete Ora Trust is a charitable organisation established in 1997 thanks to generous bequests. It invests in, and supports education and research into biodynamic, organic, and regenerative land use in Aotearoa New Zealand. Visit keteora.nz for more information. Donations to support its kaupapa are warmly invited.

Healing the earth through biodynamics

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A philosophy that transcends all cultures, religions, or science has been practised in Aotearoa for nearly a century. It’s a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition that is gaining recognition worldwide.
The content below is free to read from our latest issue, September/October 2023. This article is sponsored by Kete Ora Trust.

A holistic attitude to agriculture was initially proposed by philosopher and scientist, Rudolf Steiner, in the 1920s. Biological-dynamics (biodynamics) is a systems approach where the farm, vineyard, orchard, or garden is viewed as a living whole and each activity affects everything else.

“Biodynamics is an appropriate and powerful tool because of the way it works with different realms,” says biodynamics practitioner, Sam Weaver. “Biodynamics is inclusive, not reductive. It works with conventional science but also on a spiritual plane – that’s the power of it. It acknowledges that there are things beyond our knowledge that we can’t completely explain and certainly can’t control.

“Rudolf Steiner gave some suggestions about how those things might work, and biodynamic practitioners have been exploring and evolving those ideas ever since.”

Sam Weaver is the owner of Churton Wines, a certified organic vineyard run biodynamically in Marlborough. He says there is a growing interest in biodynamics in Aotearoa from those gardening and growing inside a Te Ao Māori framework, but the fastest expansion of biodynamics is in Southeast Asia; in places like Thailand, the Philippines and China.

Above: Village women in India learning from Rachel Pomeroy how to make biodynamic preparations.

There is also a lot of interest in Brazil and other parts of South America, says biodynamics practitioner and educator, Rachel Pomeroy.

“Biodynamics is compatible with any religious or philosophical system that is based on the truth of the world,” says Rachel. She spent many years teaching in India alongside her partner, biodynamics legend, Peter Proctor. Biodynamics was a system that all of India’s diverse traditions could embrace, whether Muslim, Catholic or Hindu.

Sam Weaver has given presentations on biodynamics to sommelier and wine students in Shanghai and other major cities in China. “Those audiences understood the importance of a lunar calendar; cosmic influences are still part of their framework of belief. So biodynamics is very comfortable for them. It’s inclusive, just as applicable to modern Western cultures as it is to people of different cultures and spiritual traditions.”

While biodynamics is often associated with viticulture and wine-making (see OrganicNZ May/June 2023), there are other sectors that prize heightened senses and appreciate the subtle terrior enhanced by biodynamic practices. In India, growing and blending the best tea and coffee is comparable to premium wine-making. “Professional tea tasters and blenders in India, have lifelong expertise. They are sampling teas all day and they can notice the difference in the teas grown biodynamically,” says Rachel.

Above: Rachel Pomeroy discussing soil fertility management with Arifa Rafee, owner of a biodynamic mango orchard in India.

Rachel’s cheerful enthusiasm and curiosity are infectious. She has a MSc(hons) in Botany and Plant Physiology and decades of practical experience with biodynamics. She is comfortable in both views and adept at weaving insights from Western science into her teaching of biodynamics. For instance, the biodynamic practice of making a cow pat pit (CPP), which has many applications and encourages health and vigour, has been found to be exceptionally high in natural growth-promoting hormones, like auxins and gibberellins.

Rachel says it would be helpful to have more science that substantiates the impact of biodynamic practices, especially given the urgent need for practices that mitigate climate change and produce food in a more environmentally-sustainable way.

But for individual farmers themselves, corroboration from Western science isn’t needed. “It would verify what they already know from their own experience. People stick with biodynamics because they like the end result. If you hate putting poison on the ground, you’re not going to enjoy your days as an industrial farmer. Those who stick with biodynamics are those making a satisfactory income while farming in a way they find satisfying and worthwhile.”

Biodynamics in Aotearoa

There are many ways that biodynamics resonates with traditional ways of knowing and here in Aotearoa it seems there is a lot of enthusiasm for exploring how biodynamic ideas reflect customary Māori systems of food growing.

Kete Ora Trust supported a two-day workshop near Wellington in 2021, co-led by Rachel Pomeroy and Dr Jessica Hutchings, a notable Māori researcher, activist, and gardener. Dozens of people gathered to share their knowledge and deepen their understanding of both biodynamics and Hua Parakore, a kaupapa Māori system and framework for growing kai.

Above: Working together to make a large biodynamic compost heap was among the many hands-on activities at the Wellington workshop.

The workshop featured conversations grounded in the Kaupapa Māori principles underpinning Hua Parakore practices and the ordering principles of the cosmos as understood through biodynamics. “Just as Ranginui and Papatūānuku ground the woven universe that is Te Ao Māori; biodynamic approaches acknowledge and harness the polarity of light and dark and the relationship between stars and soil,” said Jessica.

“Both approaches task tangata (people) with the role of rebuilding the vitality of our soils and strengthening the relationships between people and nature. Understanding ourselves as nature, and as nurturers of nature, were key learnings from our time together.”

More reading

hua-parakore.teachable.com
biodynamic.org.nz
biodynamics.com/what-is-biodynamics
papawhakaritorito.com
churtonwines.co.nz

Kete Ora Trust is a charitable organisation established in 1997 thanks to generous bequests. It invests in, and supports education and research into biodynamic, organic, and regenerative land use in Aotearoa New Zealand. Visit keteora.nz for more information about applying for grants or making a donation.

Funding the future with biodynamics

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Practitioners are convinced biodynamics is the way of the future – and are financing the research to prove it.
The content below is free to read from our May/June 2023 issue. This article is sponsored by Kete Ora Trust.

The practice of biodynamics runs deep in Aotearoa. Almost 100 years ago, the ideas expressed by Rudolf Steiner were adopted by a farm in Hawke’s Bay. A small but passionate community has existed ever since, spreading and taking root in diverse landholdings, from small backyards to iconic pastoral farms and vineyards. Part of a worldwide movement, people gleaned suggestions and possibilities from Steiner’s seven enigmatic lectures about ‘biological-dynamics’ and tested and refined them into modern biodynamic practice.

The Kete Ora Trust helps continue this learning and enquiry in modern times. It funds educational workshops and contributes to publications and conferences. Its current trustees are deeply experienced in their fields, with decades of experience in biodynamics. Kete Ora has been reinvigorated in the past 18 months, with new trustees and a new focus on funding research that produces scientific data that demonstrates the value of biodynamics practice.

Trust chair Sam Weaver is a well-known viticulturist and owner of Churton Wines. He says Kete Ora wants to raise its profile with potential donors as well as people needing funds for projects that will benefit the practice of biodynamics in New Zealand.

What makes biodynamics special?

The late Peter Proctor made a huge contribution to biodynamic understanding, not just in New Zealand but on an international scale. He was fond of saying that ‘biodynamics is what makes organics work.’ It is certainly the case that biodynamics rests on a shared foundation of accepted organic practice: protecting and enhancing soils and ecosystems and staying away from synthetic fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides.

If people know only a little bit about biodynamics, odds are they’ll associate it with planting by the moon or using homemade sprays of esoteric ingredients. These are essential tools in the biodynamic kit but they are only part of a comprehensive holistic philosophy of agriculture.

Sam Weaver says the fundamental thing that defines biodynamics is a systems approach that views every farm or garden as a living whole. “We recognise the individuality of every landholding. Every decision, every activity affects everything else. The careful observations of people deeply connected to that place play a vital role. We emphasise analysis, testing, observing, refining your practices,” he says. Specific practices are used to build soil fertility but always in the context of the needs of a particular property. You have to be a good farmer first, Peter Proctor would say, then add biodynamics on the top.

Some biodynamic properties choose to undertake the rigorous Demeter certification on top of meeting one of the organic standards. The number of Demeter licences has waxed and waned over the decades in New Zealand. Milmore Downs, a mixed farm in North Canterbury (profiled in OrganicNZ Jul/Aug 2017), is the oldest continuously licensed Demeter property in New Zealand. It’s also certified organic by BioGro.

Above: In 2022, Kete Ora Trust funded Rototuna Farm Trust to host Peter Bacchus (left) and Coral Remiro (bottom left) to run three workshops on biodynmics and vegetable growing.
Statistics
BioGro’s Organic Wine Report 2021 showed 2,418 hectares of certified organic vineyards (including 432 ha in conversion). The majority (70%) of biodynamic vineyards and producers are clustered in two regions: Marlborough and Central Otago. There were 102 organic labels and pinot noir is by far the largest variety produced.

Biodynamic winemaking

Winegrowers currently make up over half of Demeter licensees. Sam Weaver says there are reasons unique to viticulture that explain the attraction of biodynamics. “Top winemakers strive to express the character of an individual vineyard. This concept of terroir is fundamental. Biodynamics is the only farming philosophy that emphasises the individuality of a site; it makes absolute sense to growers and makers of wine.”

The qualities of the grapes are integral to the wine they yield. Beyond the characteristics of a particular site— bony soils and hot summers, for example—a thriving soil microbiology will change the way the vines take up water and nutrients. That in turn influences the quality of the fruit and the wine that can be made from them, explains Sam.

Some people come to biodynamics because of an affinity for Steiner’s broader teachings, a philosophy called anthroposophy. Others have been drawn by witnessing the results of biodynamic practice. “Winemakers in New Zealand are a close-knit community,” says Sam Weaver. “When iconic winemakers produce the very best wines in their regions and they are using biodynamic methods— their peers pay attention to that.”

It’s not surprising then that one of Kete Ora’s first scientific collaborations is with microbial ecologists from Auckland University to identify the microbial genome in soils in sauvignon blanc vineyards in Marlborough. Kete Ora is keen to expand the research remit to compare soil biology and carbon sequestration in soils managed biodynamically compared to soils managed according to industrial practices.

This has parallels in the Swiss DOK trial (biodynamic (D), organic (O) and conventional (K for the German spelling ‘konventionell’), which has been running since 1978. Details of the trial can be found at glten. org/experiments/161. There are many scientific papers available online that analyse the data collected from this site, including investigations of the difference in soil organic carbon levels.

Kete Ora’s trustees are keen to show people the science behind biodynamic practices, says Sam Weaver. “When you’re involved, you can see the qualitative benefits for yourself. But we also want to support people to get the data to prove those benefits, prove those benefits, to quantify them, and to explain how biodynamic practices work from the viewpoint of modern scientific principles.”

Ongoing impact

Kete Ora was founded in the late 1990s thanks to generous bequests from leading figures in Aotearoa’s biodynamic community. The Trust has managed those gifts very well in the decades since and is now responding to the emerging challenges we face. Sam Weaver sees the Trust’s role as ensuring the health and long-term viability of biodynamics. “Biodynamics is the most rational and effective form of carrying out agriculture, we’re convinced of it. We really want to see the light shone on biodynamics and have it recognised as at the apex of the battle against climate change.”

Kete Ora Trust is a charitable organisation established in 1997 thanks to generous bequests. It invests in, and supports education and research into biodynamic, organic, and regenerative land use in Aotearoa New Zealand. Visit keteora.nz for more information about applying for grants or making a donation.