Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/1482/en

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A new substance-composition arises within the living — a manure that provides, in an even more intimate way, for the supersensible-astral organisation of cultivated plants to impress itself upon their etheric and, through this, upon their physical organisation. The plants become more capable of sense-perception and thereby more sensitive to the substances they need for their growth: «wird die Pflanze auf diese Weise, in der feinsten Weise mit Kieselsäure durchzogen, durchlebt, dann ist es so, dass sie empfindsam wird gegen alles und alles heranzieht» («when the plant is in this way, in the most delicate way, permeated and inwardly lived-through by silica, it becomes sensitive to everything and draws everything toward itself»).[1] It is further set forth that this periphery evidently does not refer only to the root-bearing soil-space of the individual plant, but extends into the neighboring field, forest, and bordering meadow.[2] This initially puzzling statement can, in light of current scientific knowledge, be readily interpreted through the phenomenon of the symbiosis of plant roots with soil fungi (*Mycorrhiza*), whose mycelia — a mesh of cell-threads (*hyphae*) — interconnect the root systems of plants across greater distances. The hyphae supply the plants on the one hand with water (forest trees), but above all with mineral substances, while on the other hand they benefit from the plants' energy-household. One can understand the phenomenon of mutually promoting cohabitation (*symbiosis*) of higher-developed organisms with lower ones in the

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  1. Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Grundlagen zum Gedeihen der Landwirtschaft, GA 327, Vortrag vom 13. Juni 1924, Dornach 1999, S. 138.
  2. Ebd., S. 138.