Translations:Manfred Klett: Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst/99/en

This fact above all grounds the fundamentally polar mode of production in industry and agriculture. It also expresses itself in the fact that the agricultural means of production — soil, plants, animals — by virtue of their capacity for self-renewal cannot be depreciated. What depreciation as a capital reserve is in industry, is in agriculture the value-preserving and value-developing force of the farm organism as a wholeness. The replacement of human labour power and animal tractive power by the machine has nonetheless brought agriculture high depreciation costs — costs that do not relate to the means of production as such. But it is not the combine harvester that produces the grain, not the milking machine that produces the milk; it is life — the relationship-creating world of forces — that has its origin in the essential being of living and ensouled nature.