Vale Alex Podolinsky, biodynamic farming expert, who has died aged 93

Producers have paid tribute to a European immigrant who helped them switch to a new way of farming.

ALEX Podolinsky died on June 30, just short of his 94th birthday. Many farmers attended the celebration of his life on his farm at Powelltown in Gippsland on July 9.

They celebrated him as an independent thinker who built on Rudolf Steiner’s ideas to develop a way of farming that built the soil, boosting its capacity to hold air and water without the use of chemicals.

Along with veterinarian Andrew Sargood, Alex established the Biodynamic Research Institute at Powelltown, where he farmed.

Working with Australian farmers, he was able to develop and improve what some say were failing European methods of biodynamic farming to such a degree that he returned to Europe with a finessed version known as the Australian Demeter method of biodynamic farming. It is now practised across France, Italy, Denmark, Germany, Austria and is also used in China, Taiwan and Malaysia and elsewhere.

It is based on a series of carefully cultivated, microbe-rich preparations applied in synchronicity on suitable days, times of year, and in appropriate conditions. He said biodynamic methods could build as much as 25cm of new soil in a year if applied correctly.

Some doubted his ideas, declaring that burying manure-filled cow horns over winter to make the 500 to then spray out over the land was akin to hocus pocus.

Others who practise his methods swear by them, and across Australia broadacre cropping and grazing farmers, as well as fruit and vegetable producers, who time and again find their soils enlivened by these methods, carry on his legacy.

He also left legacies in education and in architecture, designing and helping to build Steiner schools at Warranwood, Canberra and Kilsyth. The prizemoney he won in a competition to design a multi-storeyed office building helped fund the Warranwood Steiner kindergarten.

Vale: Alex Podolinski passed away at the age of 93.

Born in southwest Germany, to a German mother and a Russian count who had fled the Russian Revolution in 1925, Alexie Sergie de Podolinsky came to Australia in 1949 on a migrant ship.

As a child he attended boarding schools in England, France and Switzerland and graduated from university with a degree in graphology (handwriting).

By that time he had developed an intense interest in anthroposophy and the ideas of Steiner, introduced to him by his godmother. He played the flute and was multilingual.

Because he could speak French, he was forced to enlist in the German army and was sent to France as a spy, where he was poisoned. The hospital he was in was bombed and he was declared unfit for further war service.

Despite this service, he was never accepted as a German national thanks to his Russian heritage, and because he felt politically unsafe he fled to Ben Chifley’s Australia as a refugee.

He and his wife, Katherine, came first to Bonegilla migrant camp before he got work at the Broadmeadows camp a year later.

He farmed Jersey cows at Wonga Park, negotiating better contracts for the dairy farmers of the Yarra Valley and earning high praise for his cattle.

He then established a farm at Powelltown from where he set about his mission to share and develop biodynamic methods with farmers in his own area and beyond.

Lynton Greenwood, whose sons are the third generation to grow fruit at Merrigum using Alex’s biodynamic methods, described Alex as a powerful character with missionary zeal.

“He did not put up with fools. He spoke his mind. He upset people,” Lynton says.

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Yet Alex was widely respected by those who had the courage to apply his methods, he said.

“He had a Peugeot car that did over a million kilometres in the late ‘70s as he went around Australia visiting farms and sharing the methods and he never charged for any of it,” Lynton says.

“He learnt a lot from Australian farmers and he spoke very highly of their capacity and their willingness to look at their practices open-mindedly and to see things they hadn’t seen before.”

Farmers speak of Alex phoning or calling in at 6am, having travelled hours to discuss farming with them. Many attest to his fortitude and his physical ability to work prodigiously.

Speaking at Alex’s funeral, Biodynamic Agricultural Association of Australia chairman Trevor Hatch said “the thing that impressed them was this educated, cultured European could talk to farmers, in their own language”.

The Hatches, then beef and potato producers, adopted biodynamic methods in the 1960s after struggling with disease such as bloat, grass tetany and milk fever in their cattle.

“Within a few months the metabolic troubles that we’d had problems with for 30 years gradually tapered off and petered out and eventually disappeared altogether and have never risen again in 50 years and to us that was reality,” Trevor said

Grape grower and wine maker John Nagorcka introduced biodynamics to his vineyards, east of Hamilton, in 1999. He says the method means his soils can absorb more water and have more structure, plus grass stays greener for longer and his wines have a more rounded acidity.

Alex had given farmers confidence that their efforts, if applied correctly, would be well rewarded unlike fear-based conventional methods, he says.

Alex’s was a remarkable contribution to Australian farming.

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