Snapshot : 2008
I am aware of several homeopaths working in agriculture. A published one is Vaikunthanath Das Kaviraj who wrote ‘Homeopathy for Farm and Garden’. Kaviraj is a Dutch man who worked in India with Dr. Chatterjee after having his own health rescued by homoeopathy. He worked with Dr. Chatterjee and then took over his rural practice for many years. He is a committed classical homeopath who has carried over this approach to agriculture; one simple remedy, repeated only after improvement has ceased and after retaking the case etc., etc. At a friend’s house he was asked to treat fruit trees after having treated the family and animals there. Okay, he would try out of interest. The tree lost the leaves with the rust and grew new unaffected ones and set fruit which had lost the bitter taste it had had up to this point. This improvement carried over to subsequent seasons. Hmmm, interesting… Kaviraj had started with a crude kind of anthropomorphic approach: if this apple tree were a human it would need Belladonna – redness, thirst etc - and Belladonna was the effective remedy. Kaviraj went on to experiment in Europe, India and Australia and became convinced that this was a very fruitful approach. At one stage, in Western Australia, his slug preparation (helix tosta) had a large market-share until the regulatory costs became excessive and life took him on to other things.
Also in India, whilst studying homeopathy, GSR Murthy had to leave his flat for a period and was concerned that his balcony roses would not survive until he came back. Indeed, on his return, they were all dead – except one. This one had been watered with a remedy. Hmmm … interesting. Dr Murthy then began over 30 years of research with many plants such as rice, ladies fingers, various lentils, bananas etc. He called his resulting preparations ‘Homeonutrients’. I suspect this will strike many as a misnomer, but all agricultural homeopaths have learned to dodge and weave a little in the face of the legal restraints at which footnote iii hints, and the laws concerning fertilizers are potentially more navigable than those of growth regulators etc., which are all lumped together as pesticides in the meaning of the acts. In these 30 years he has made complex remedies and undertaken trials with university guidance comparing yields between his homeonutrients, standard fertilizers, and with no additions as a control. His preparations produce ‘at par’ or yield more than the chemically fertilized plots, and the health and taste is always superior. The control plots produce much less.
Work is also ongoing in South America at the Comenius Institute and Pakistan’s Iftkhar Waris of Lahore has had ‘99% success’ with the problems which beset cotton. Also in India is the Agrocare range of Dr Abdul Lethif. Again in India a patent has been applied for by Swami Paramand. Pankaj Oudhia has been working with many growers in rural areas of South India investigating the effect of homeopathic remedies in agriculture. Academic research is strong in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, India and Brazil. No doubt there are others in both the fields and laboratories. (Please tell me of any you know.)
