Biodynamics
What is Biodynamic Farming?
Biodynamics is a holistic approach to farming, food, and nutrition. Biodynamics is based in the work of philosopher and scientist Dr. Rudolf Steiner, whose 1924 lectures to farmers opened a new way to integrate scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature.
Biodynamics has continued to develop and evolve since the 1920s through the collaboration of many farmers and researchers. Around the world, biodynamics is alive in thousands of thriving farms. The principles and practices of biodynamics can be applied anywhere food is grown, with thoughtful adaptation to scale, landscape, climate, and culture.
One Whole Organism
Each biodynamic farm is a unified organism. This organism is made up of many interdependent elements: seasons, forests, plants, animals, soils, people, and the spirit of the place. Biodynamic farmers work to nurture and orchestrate these elements, managing them in a holistic and dynamic way to support the health and vitality of the whole. Biodynamic practitioners also endeavor to listen to the land, to sense what may want to emerge through it, and to develop and evolve their farm as a unique individuality. Biodynamic farming practices ask farmers to hold the land with respect and tentativeness, to work alongside and with the environment instead of against it.
Biodynamic farms are integrated with the biodiversity of the withstanding ecosystems and the individuality of each landscape. Annual and perennial vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries, fruits, nuts, grains, pasture, forage, native plants, and pollinators can all contribute to plant diversity, deepening the well being and pliancy of the farm organism. Diversity in domestic animals is also beneficial and recommended, as each creature brings a unique quality of manure. The variance of plant and animal life can be developed over time, starting with a few primary crops and one or two species of animals, and adding more species as the farm organism grows and matures.
Biodiversity
Plant & Animal Balance
All natural ecosystems have included plants and animals, which participate to fill interdependent roles in the web of life. Many conventional and organic farms exclusively grow crops or raise livestock, which may be more efficient in the short term, yet creates imbalances such as nutrient deficiency in raising crops, or pollution from excess manure if only raising animals. Biodynamic farms work to bring plants, animals, and soil together, so that they each support and balance the whole. Biodynamic farming’s purpose is to allow the farm to become self sustaining, to close an input circle while allowing both crops and animals to thrive.
Biodynamic plants are grown in living soil, which provides a quality of health and nutrition not possible with chemical fertilizers or hydroponic growing. Biodynamic farms aspire to create their own independence through composting, integrating animals, cover cropping, and crop rotation. Composting brings manures, plant material, and soil into flourishing collaborations which reinvents them into a robust source of strength and fertility for the farm.
Integrating a diversity of animals helps cycle nutrients and provides manures that nurture the soil. Cover crops also contribute to farm independence, as this contributes plant diversity which in turn adds to the soil through oxygen and nitrogen. Crop rotation helps balance the needs of each crop and enables diverse nutrient inputs and outputs of the soil, which regenerates and adds more microbiology to the soil. Together, these practices reduce or eliminate the need for imported fertilizers and enable the farm to move toward farm independence.
Farm Independence
Holistic Pest & Disease Management
Biodynamics focuses on fostering and building the conditions for optimal soil, plant, and animal health, providing balanced nutrition and supporting healthy immunity. When farms embody a potent diversity of plants and animals; Pests and diseases have few places to thrive. When a disease or pest presents itself, it is often pointing to an imbalance in the farm organism, and can be seen as the ecosystems way of balancing itself. In the case of an outbreak, biological controls can be used, but a biodynamic farmer also tries to discern the underlying imbalance and find ways to adjust management practices to bring the farm organism to greater health. The pest or disease is not the problem for a Biodynamic Farmer; it is what is allowing the pest or disease to come to fruition.