Biodynamics: A Holistic Approach to Farming & Gardening - EcoJustice Radio
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hello and you are listening to Eco Justice radio a project of SoCal 350 climate action our show presents environmental and climate stories from a social justice frame featuring voices not necessarily heard on mainstream media. Welcome I am Jack Eidt
On today's show biodynamics a holistic approach to farming and gardening hosts Carrie Kim will be interviewing Stuart Lundy education and media manager of the Josephine Porter Institute for applied biodynamics Stuart Lundy is a biodynamic farmer in Virginia where he raises cattle and sheep and runs a small Market Garden with his wife Natalie together they have been farming since 2010 he consults with regenerative Growers around the world the Josephine Porter Institute is a national producer and distributor of biodynamic preparations the enlivening forces that work dynamically within the soil compost and plants to ultimately provide us with healthier foods healthier bodies and a healthier planet
Aloha this is Carrie Kim listeners thank you for joining us today to learn about the legacy of Rudolph Steiner and the benefits of biodynamics with our guest Stuart Lundy of the Josephine Porter Institute for applied biodynamics we thank the tongva ancestors for their continuing presence Legacy and profound connections to this area that transcends stewardship alone our show comes to you from the ancestral unseated territory of the tongva and all of their relatives we invite you to support Sovereign tribal Nations and to engage in actions that honor and ensure the continuance of their wisdom homelands and lifeways wherever you live biodynamics was born out of the work and passions of Austrian philosopher and scientist Dr Rudolph Steiner beginning with his Infamous lectures in 1924 which inspired Farmers to a new and also ancient way of integrating scientific understanding with a recognition of spirit in nature born in the late 1800s architect social reformer and esotericist who also founded the anthroposophical spiritual movement following World War One Steiner was engaged in the Waldorf education movement which now has over 1 000 schools on six continents biodynamic Agriculture and anthroposophical Medicine biodynamic agriculture is considered one of the first forms of modern organic farming and since 1920 biodynamics has involved and continued to develop with the collaboration of numerous farmers and researchers globally the principles and practices of biodynamics is Alive and Well thriving in thousands of gardens Farms Vineyards ranches and Orchards biodynamics is accessible to anyone and its wisdom and guiding principles can be applied wherever food is grown by thoughtfully adapting to scale landscape climate and culture akin to the views of indigenous peoples worldwide biodynamics reminds us and the spiritual aspects of nature are not mutually exclusive but rather part of a holistic cosmological View
welcome Stuart it's been a long time coming great to be here many thanks for joining us on the show today to share about the benefits of biodynamics you know I would like you to start at the beginning which is how would you define biodynamics or biodynamic agriculture well the simplest way I'd put it goes to the word itself which is biodynamics which is about working with kind of the life forces undergirding what we see with our eyes so there's a lot of stuff under the surfaces and it's about consciously working with life not just you know the outsides of things but their inner part and that's the main thing and when you really do that on in a conscious way you realize that the Vitality of Earth
streams in from the cosmos and it's dependent on the whole not just on a superficial reading of a soil test by itself there's a quality of life that
needs to be brought back to the Earth kind of revisified and that's kind of the aim of biodynamics in order that human Freedom can Thrive worldwide well it seems that one of the most challenging things for folks who are not who've kind of lost their Keen powers of observation and connection with nature that these aspects that we're talking about are really I would say a lot of it is felt experience and it's intangible it's not something that is just articulated like you said on an intellectual level so I think that is one of the the reasons why you know biodynamics maybe people haven't found it in the same way as permaculture has been so widespread but there's that other element but I think that's also what's missing it's a key part of what modern people are missing in reconnecting with nature and these forces we were once this way when we
were animists when we were Pagan when we were more connected to everything around us as indigenous peoples absolutely this grows out of a time in the early 20th century where tractors are being introduced large-scale agrochemicals and these ways of farming are being mocked as unscientific uneducated peasant and like rural Europe was practicing for I mean indigenous European practices and they were using biochar carefully composting they would stir compost and water singing to it and then they spray that over their fields there's a German term for that which is tone singing which is a play on words it means tones singing or also Clay singing That's but biodynamics ended up picking up right as
almost all of this was being eradicated under the fist of scientific progress but these are very old ways mostly forgotten in Europe
I mean could you share a little about Rudolph Steiner's original 1924 lectures that spawn biodynamics is a as a movement agricultural movement what what was the context of those lectures I mean you already kind of given the backdrop of course we had World War World War one and then burgeoning industrialization it's not surprising that even back then farmers were concerned about the future of farming it's hauntingly familiar to now well this set of lectures was based on a promise that Steiner had made and he kept postponing doing these lectures he was a very busy man but this was for count Keyserlingk who had a large estate and his son finally showed up on Rudolph Steiner's doorstep and said he wasn't going to go home without a promise of a specific date it worked and Steiner finally did show up and gave these lectures but the reason for it is that people were noticing that their food was not as good anymore it didn't taste as good the seed viability was declining
and you were ending up with I mean Mass scale starvation at the time like millions of people were dying from malnourishment through Europe and these it was becoming a serious concern that are we going to be able to feed people if our food quality keeps declining out of that major concern Steiner was called in to try to draw on esoteric ideas of how do we reintegrate deadened Earth into living soil and how do we weave the Earthly realm back into the cosmos so he brings some rather unusual sounding preparations but the aim is to bring back to the soil things that had accumulated over eons but to do it consciously in a human way so that the soil has the full spectrum of Life forces necessary to Foster plant life but also human development you know the agriculture course or this these lectures we're referring to from 1924 it reads spiritual foundations for the renewal of Agriculture which I personally love I think it's appreciate title for agriculture today because I do feel that part of what's missing from even regenerative agriculture that it there's even that other step further regenerative is amazing I mean and very much necessary but there's another level to this Cosmic level that is is this work and it's it's the same to me it's indigenous agriculture as we've talked about because those elements of the moon and the stars and the ancestors all these things were all woven together and that's how people would Farm if they did Farm you know there there's a certain kind of Mystique that surrounds Rudolph Steiner and I'm wondering what would you like listeners to know about him anthroposophy and the origins of biodynamics well one of Steiner's key concerns is freedom for all individuals he developed what he called ethical individualism which is not an anti-social impulse but that the freedom of society is going to depend on every individual being free to express themselves and follow their own individual path his book which is originally titled the philosophy of Freedom became um intuitive thinking as a spiritual path that he said in one one of his lectures that if everything else that he put together was lost he would want that one to be preserved that particular book but anthroposophy is about getting beyond the merely materialistic scientific climate of the time I mean you had scientific materialist Marxism at the time that saw everything as just atoms bumping into each other purely materialistic dialectic and this is kind of a response to it to try to bring back no the spiritual element the Life Element back into these things so that's where it came from and the term itself that Steiner uses his anthroposophy which is really human wisdom or the wisdom of Being Human which is really how do we belong to the world again rather than acting like complete strangers to it personally that stands out from those 1924 lectures well I've spent my time wading through them re-reading them reading them and there's a key element
and Steiner talks about these different medicinal herbs and he says of each of them with the exception of one that substitutes can easily be found no there's the conventional Orthodox formula for biodynamics which are all European herbs but most of these are on every continent and substitutes can be found now what that means is that this is a Formula that can be adapted sensitively to each region out of indigenous medicinal practices and it's built into the formula now whether that used worldwide or whether that's recognized by things like the Demeter standard that's another question but it is built into it that this was not meant to be exclusively eurocentric even though all the herbs do grow in Europe there are intended substitutes that people are meant to find out with their own research well I love that it as a global and obviously it is practice globally and internationally successfully what what about Josephine Porter herself and her 30 years of dedication to biodynamics maybe it's more now there were there was a biodynamic conference and a lot of people wanted to know at the time why are the biodynamic preparations such Secrets no one knew how to put them no one knew the recipe at the time if you wanted to get a copy of the agriculture course they were all numbered and you could check them out one chapter at a Time chapter before you got it better well at this conference a lot of people wanted to know how to make them and Josephine Porter stood up turned around and said well I'll show you how to make them they're not a secret and she got a list of some 20 30 people to sign up and only one person actually followed through and that was Hugh Courtney he's the only person who showed up in the fall and he ended up carrying that on for 30 years more or less and the legacy is from
Steiner who taught Aaron fried Pfeiffer Eric Pfeiffer taught Josephine Porter Pfeiffer was kind of the main person bringing biodynamics to the United States and just sort of learn directly from him and then you Courtney from her and I learned from you Courtney so that's a short line back to Steiner but her work was carrying on in particular the stuff that Aaron fried Pfeiffer had developed namely the Pfeiffer field and garden spray which has a combination of all the biodynamic preparations as well as some other proprietary things but Josephine Porter Institute is the sole Creator and distributor of that and it is a is a remarkable stimulant for the soil because you get everything done in a single pass and I've seen in my own experience on my farm some astonishing results but that was her Legacy is keeping that alive keeping that torch burning and passing it on to you cue Courtney yeah and then and then you are the next one in lights yeah what what are the Core Concepts of biodynamic farming Core Concepts of biodynamic farming center around the idea of the farm as a living organism and not just as a metaphor or a poetic idea but as a concrete living thing and when the agriculture course was delivered the term ecosystem had not yet been coined Steiner maybe would have used it if he had that term but think of it the farm is an organism it's its own microclimate it's its own ecosystem it has an ability to maintain difference between the environment and yet also integrate into the environment is its own whole and it's about creating a farm that provides all of its own fertility needs from within itself depending on the cosmos and the obviously the energy that streams in and our ability to capture that in the form of sugars and plants and compost and the result is that it doesn't depend on outside inputs you're not buying in agrochemicals you're not buying in fertilizers you're not depending on products from abroad if every Farm we're operating like this if every country were operated like this everyone would be able to feed each other and we've you know far less to squabble about in terms of resources because the idea is this independent thing not so it's out of selfishness but it becomes this like bioreactor of abundance that's the core tenant so well how did you become a biodynamic farmer yourself were you practicing other forms of farming before practicing biodynamics yes I began farming in 2010 and we began with the idea of a homestead feeding ourselves sustainability we had permaculture elements mixed in but it took a few years before we'd even heard of biodynamics you've stumbled onto that and was that actually my wife pushing me into it but for a while it didn't didn't make sense it just didn't so um well I think that I mean there's definitely people who anytime you talk about spirituality or Cosmic forces you're going to have your Skeptics and I actually took me about I had to read six books until I found the work of Maria tune and Aaron Pfeiffer and those made me go okay there's there's something to this because they were showing results with plants and how they
grew differently and they were showing um microbiological analysis of the preparations and okay I was able to slip
in with that but it didn't make sense to me it didn't really click until an
article by Hue level in acres USA where he writes about the tides being governed
by the moon and by analogy he just transposes that to plants that the moon
governs the rise and fall of sap in plants so if the moon is descending
every night getting lower and lower the sap is going down to the roots of the plant and that's a good time to
transplant because you're they act active area of the plant is the root so it'll really get grounded when you
transplant on conversely if you transplant when the moon is getting higher every day from your perspective
this app is going up and out of the leaves well they might just all evaporate dehydrate and die rather than
take root and just the realizing that there's this tidal process in plants
that moment was the moment that I'm like there's something to this and kept exploring but that was what opened it
right and then you actually through the practice itself right I mean there's no there's no substitute for direct
experience right absolutely and we first started with a small area around our home
so this area is actually about three years ahead of the rest of the farm in terms of development because it has seen
three extra years of biodynamic treatment and Steiner does say in the
agriculture course lectures to start with a small plot now he doesn't say why
other than if you mess up you'll only be messing up a small plummet but he said you realize that the reason
for that is that you'll always have something to compare that is further developed right right well you know what
this term I came across is Farm individuality
can you speak about that in relationship to biodynamics that gets to that notion
of the farm as an organism but as an individuality it is a unique expression
of a universal idea so all of us are human beings but we're all unique expressions of Being Human and that's
what makes us unique that's what makes us individual there is the idea of the farm as this self-sufficient organism
but that's going to look different in an arid climate in a humid climate in the tropics and the mountains it's going to
be individualized it can't you can't just copy someone else's farm and paste
it in your your region it must be adapted to your climate your soil everything and that's what makes it an
individual expression of that idea yeah well I think that when we hear that word
individual becomes something else but we understand it's individual like you say a unique expression and an individual
versus separate which is something right listeners we're going to go to a break and we'll be back with Stuart Lundy to
talk more at the current state of farming hey listeners quick break here we hope
that you're enjoying Eco Justice radio we air every Friday at 4pm on kpfk Los
Angeles and Sunday at 4 pm on kpft Houston stay connected by subscribing to
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extended version of this interview as well as other benefits we encourage you to become a member of our patreon
today you are listening to biodynamics a holistic approach to farming and
gardening with host Carrie Kim and guest Stuart Lundy education and media manager
of the Josephine Porter Institute for applied biodynamics
so we're back with Stuart Lundy of Josephine Porter Institute for applied biodynamics
Stuart today we are witnessing a global Embrace of regenerative farming
but also simultaneously we're seeing a technological acceleration that includes
biotech blockchain Tech synthetic microbes drones genetic modification 2.0
and the like what is the importance of seeing a farm as a holistic living
organism well I see it as a if you take a poem
and you randomly splice in new words or letters the poem stops making sense
and that's what this modification starts to do it's there is a poetic syntax to
life you start splicing in the things we want to be in that poem we've broken the
meter the rhythm of life has been altered and it may serve us for the
moment but the long-term effects of that are completely untested so the idea is
thinking holistically is thinking in as something has its own wholeness and
that's the idea of the farm as an organism or as an individuality it is something that has wholeness it is has
an indivisible quality like each of us has our own uniqueness by thinking of it
that way we're far more likely to treat it well even if we don't necessarily
believe or interact with fairies and Elemental beings if we treat the soil as
if they're there and as if the soil has its own personal likes and dislikes
we're far more likely to treat it in a humanizing way rather than a
dehumanizing way I think that it's very important to see it as having its own wishes as well having its own as you say
it's likes and dislikes and that it's a more of a spirit or an ancestor it's very different to think soil or a plant
or a tree or a microbe in this way and this poetic syntax to life I love this
this that you said that because I think inserting ourselves and coming up with these technological solutions is real
it's just reflective of being in the anthropocene era where everything is
really human-centric and even though even if Steiner's philosophies were about human a human kind of a wisdom or
access to Spirit it's not human at the expense of all the rest of Life
absolutely he saw that the Universe had this tendency towards becoming human or
I mean or it wouldn't have produced us but that we're meant to integrate here and that the Earth wouldn't be better
without us and that actually the Earth with us can be better than without us if
intended lovingly and consciously as it has been by indigenous Traditions
worldwide and this is something that would sit wrong with a lot of people
these days having seen how much Humanity has just spoiled the Earth they think Humanity must be bad it's like no it's
us acting inhumanely that's doing this it's not the human part that's the
problem it's inhumane right and himself said that if it were not for human beings the Earth would have actually
died long ago that we have this integral part of the the living ecosystem and the
spirit of the earth and that we're here as kind of Priests of the earth not just something that happened to arise here
but we have a meaningful calling here and that without that human Duty being fulfilled to the Earth yeah it would
have died before so we're not fulfilling that very well right now globally I'll say that do you actually believe that I
mean that the Earth would not exist without human beings because I think during the pandemic I think people
witness that oh Earth would do just fine without us come back and Thrive because we wouldn't
be destroying it anymore in the ways that we do well there's a tendency in
certain ecosystems to reach their Climax and even to deteriorate everything is
moving towards change but and some but we're one of the few beings that can
take a desert and turn it green and we have that power and that's the internalization of this the all the
streaming processes of the universe converge in the human being and we are generalists who have that power we can't
green the desert we can do incredible things in making things even more
habitable and more hospitable to diverse life we haven't been doing that we just
we haven't and you're right if we simply stop the destructive behaviors we're going to see nature rebound and nature
will be fine it's just I don't see as far as Steiner maybe because I think what you're saying and it's like when
there are fewer people messing up ecosystems it seems to just Thrive but the idea is everything has a sort of
biological clock even ecosystems and that at some point those wear out and
will go on and the human being though is able to take fertility from over here or
even mineral salts from the ocean and bring them up to a depleted area and we're able to help the earth live in a
way it wouldn't have like the terraprata soils of blackening the Earth that's
something that basically wouldn't happen by accident and yet it is a human Innovation that has made an area more
fertile than it ever would have been and that's us at our best right well I think that the key is being in service to life
that human beings you say when we're being Humane when we are taking that role of being a servant to life or
helping life create more life that's that's where we shine or can you know as
a biodynamic farmer what do you see as our golden opportunity living in this
anthra era where there is so much focus on human moments at the center of the of
the universe in a way is biodynamics one of the ways through which we can restore our relationship to Nature I think it is
I think it has to be that no matter how small the plot it's about taking the
center of the universe and putting it outside of myself it's not about me it's
about how I integrate with the rest of the world and I would place biodynamics
with what massanova fukuoko called ahayana Farming versus hinayana farming
or conventional farming it's about creating something that does more than just mitigate my own excesses but it can
absorb the karma of the surrounding ecosystems and create basically a reservoir an oasis of
biodiversity that is really the source of re reinoculating the rest of the Earth
We're surrounded by conventional farms and everyone has to make ends meet and I don't mean to criticize the character of
the people who are farming that way but the soil is being deadened repeatedly well at some point that's not going to
work anymore and where is the new wave of biodiversity going to come from well
all of these little pockets someone's backyard an organic farm here or general Farm their biodynamic firm there you
at some point biodiversity is going to re-emerge from those places and yes there are sprays
and chemicals happening all around us but every time I reuse these biostimulants
I'm training life to adapt under those pressures and when life returns to these
fields they're going to come from farms like mine and Gardens like anyone else's that it we're already doing that we're
planting seeds for the future and if you were to create a heat map around the world they're all of these inoculation points almost like points on a log if
you grew through mushrooms so we're creating that possibility because this form of Agriculture is going to run out
and the large-scale industrial one that's treating soil like dead substrate
that's going to run out and life is going to have to come from somewhere and that's what we're fostering and it you
may never get credit for it but who cares if you're in service like what is
the difference between organic farming and biodynamics I mean biodynamics is a
form of organic farming but the two are are not mutually exclusive terms how are they similar how are they different
well I would say that the simplest thing is that organic is about what you exclude
like you don't use these chemicals you avoid certain things okay even though now the standard has got a lot of
exceptions that they allow now Twix is actually not just that yeah you
you don't use synthetics but it's about what you add it's what you bring to the soil it's about the
positive aspirations about fostering life so I would actually say that organic
farming Works in as much as it is secretly quietly and unbeknownst to the
farmer perhaps it's already biodynamic it is obeying the laws of life to whatever degree it may not consciously
be introducing to the soil things that are missing like the biodynamic preparations which are
to me very specific aspects of plant growth that almost never go back into
the soil and what we're doing when we use those preparations is supplying the soil with everything that a plant might
need for every possible stage of growth and we don't usually think very
consciously about a compost we think of it here's a waste pile it's whatever goes into it but how often are we giving
medicinal herbs to our compost pile treat it like it's a living thing that has the same needs as you and your food
really does become medicine because that medicine goes out with the compost
a little bit about the bio-dynamic preparations or give an example of how some of them are created because I think
some people may not be familiar with with any of the biodynamic preps so don't get the simplest one it's not the
one people usually start with but it's stinging nettles stinging nettles is a wonderful plant it has every essential
amino acid it has several non-essential amino acids as calcium zinc magnesium
silica wonderful plant great blood Builder well you take that chop it up
and you bury it some people bury it straighten soil other people put it in like a clay vessel and then bury that
for a full year and that allow is allowed to decompose in a controlled environment and then you take small
amounts of that and it works like an inoculant on your compost pile it's also the only preparation that
Aaron fried Pfeiffer found consistently improved flavor in crops so a really important one
that's why I like to start with that other ones are different plants the herb put in this kind of sheath like
chamomile for example settles the stomach helps with digestion improves assimilation well you put the chamomile
into the sheath that controls the process of digestion in his assimilation which is an intestine you make a sausage out of
it and then you allow that to dry age and then you bury that over winter another full year process and the result
is you've trapped something that would normally just evaporate and go back to the cosmos all of these aromatic
essential oils that are in a plant how often can those go down and essential
oil diffuses and goes up out and away we try to trap that life
compost it carefully in a sheath and then introduce it to the compost who
takes that which would normally disperse and bring it to the root so we restore to
the soil things that usually take a very long time to accumulate by Nature like
if you look at what like scientific reports on how long topsoil takes to build it's hundreds of years but under
proper human management under biodynamic management for example topsoil can improve from being very
shallow to being eight inches deep and then organic matter down 40 inches deep the
concentration is still two percent all the way down it's incredible how quickly under the right treatment humans can
create regenerated topsoil but you have to know the way could you speak more about growing
plants in revitalized living soil versus the dead dirt
and how that's actually maybe it's a little bit more about the preparations in achieving that
well no you can use organic matter cover crops but putting a living plant into a
dead would be like plopping a human being into a dead and sterile environment it it just wouldn't make
sense that these plants need life in the soil you can almost think of
what you build up in the soil is a battery you're building up potential energy in the soil which can then
disperse as kinetic energy into what emerges as planets themselves but if the
battery is low the plants aren't going to thrive or have the energy to grow to
their full potential and that's any number of methods can get to that yeah everybody people do that every day
right and then they and then they add fertilizers you know because it's because they're going to get in
something dead and they you know they wonder why it doesn't grow well without having to add all these you know
synthetic or or other kind of um inputs and that's actually something
interesting where um there's Christine Jones does a lot of regenerative soil work with the liquid carbon pathway but
she identifies that we really only need four functional groups in a cover crop
they just have to be four distinct species you could have borage you could have an aster like sunflower you could
have Cecilia and you have any number of things and they don't even have to be a legume but if you get those four and you
put it up with total nutrient cycling without adding fertilizers that's amazing that's the least I've ever heard
I've always heard at least eight but exactly but that's I know I I always thought it was more than that some
biodynamic mixes it's they try to do 30 or more it's it's which is a lot but if
need four to get total nutrient cycling it's it's pretty incredible what you can do with actually very little and no
legume either like it just works so what do you say to people who would say
biodynamics is too time intensive I don't have a year to wait I don't have
the time to make make the preparations myself you know what what do you say to people who have that I don't know if
it's a misconception or if it's true that biodynamics is a labor-intensive practice
well I don't think it's a labor-intensive practice myself the amount of time it takes to make the
preparations is yeah you may spend a few days out of your year but you make something that lasts for
years and you can use on thousands of pounds of compost and uh let's say you do the stirring you
stir how many times let's say you did once every quarter so that's four times let's say it's four hours well
what is it doesn't change how you farm it's just changed the quality of what's growing and maybe then you deal with
fewer pests maybe you have fewer weed problems but the efficiencies of the farmer are totally separate issue
whether someone follows like a lean Farm method or they follow something like John jevins or Alan Chadwick's approach
that's separate biodynamics doesn't say how to be efficient or to attain the
Flow State it's just bringing Vitality back to the soil Steiner actually repeatedly said
continue farming as you have been the way you did compost the way you did
but just also add these preparations binoculars well I guess the thing is
about you're moving the time around right the time that you spend in stirring or or burying a horn in the
ground for a year those think you save the time later anyway because you are creating more Vitality in the soil so I
found that in in one hour I can do some bad things if I cultivate the soil and
it's the wrong weather I can ruin a part of the soil and it takes a year for that to recover whereas if I stir the horn
manure preparation and I understand people thinking okay they don't have time to make them they can buy them like
from Josephine Porter Institute but if you stir that for an hour and spray that out you're getting more done in that one
hour than most of your manual labor accomplishes in terms of regenerating the soil and sequestering carbon from
that one hour it's so it's some of the most use of your time because of how
much it stimulates the proper soil biology Stuart we're going to take another break
here listeners stay with us we'll be back with Stuart Lundy of Josephine Porter Institute of Applied biodynamics
hey listeners quick break here we hope that you're enjoying Eco Justice radio we air every Friday at 4 pm on kpfk Los
Angeles and Sunday at 4 pm on kpft Houston stay connected by subscribing to
Eco Justice radio on all major podcast apps and visit our website
ecojusticeradio.org to check out previous shows and guests and get connected with us on social media for an
extended version of this interview as well as other benefits we encourage you to become a member of our patreon today
you're listening to biodynamics a holistic approach to farming and gardening with host Carrie Kim and guest
Stuart Lundy education and media manager of the Josephine Porter Institute for
applied biodynamics Stuart I wonder if you could tell us a
little bit about the research I don't know what kind of researched API is involved with around biodynamics is it
primarily geared towards biodynamic Farmers or are are you trying to assess
or measure things what what sort of research is JPI doing yeah that's something we're really looking to expand
in this next year coming up on the Centennial biodynamics there's a lot of good research but you know some of it
from the 60s and we need to repeat it get it up to date show that it you know
is still relevant today and what we're working with is plant Trials of showing
here's a control here's something that got a treatment with the preparation here's something that got a Miracle Grow
here's something that got compost and show the development difference in terms of root development and in terms of the
tops and you can weigh those afterwards they're called rhizoboxes and compare
how the root systems develop under different stimulants in addition to that
in the biodynamic world we try to do what are called picture forming methods so rather than merely relying on numbers
from a soil test we'd like to make a picture their primary modes one is
chromatography and the other is sensitive crystallization sensitive
crystallization actually you take a drop of a particular substance and you put it in a copper chloride solution and it
forms these beautiful crystals and you can tell based on the coherence of the crystal pattern how healthy or unhealthy
the organism or the source is in chromatography we can take a soil
sample and combine that with silver nitrate and we actually get a photograph we develop a picture out of a soil
sample and you can tell whether a soil is alive or dead how healthy it is how
much microbiological diversity it is you can tell the quality of humus whether it's like really really really well
digested or whether it's basically wood chips and those are two that we do alongside
microbiological analysis because that's what most of the world's interested in but we're trying to
show in picture forms life like it's take a snapshot of the life well picture
definitely does say a thousand words doesn't it I think people see it immediately it's something that registers with them immediately if you
can see it in a picture could you describe a little bit the difference that the picture shows in
dead dirt versus a biodynamically alive soil oh yeah so in dead soil you're just
going to see an outer ring it'll look pretty bare
it'll be uninteresting in a living soil with a great diversity of biological
life you're going to see all of these like rain it's almost like a star radiating out with different Feathering
fingertips reaching out on all different directions and the greater the diversity the greater the variation you're going
to see around the edges of this you're going to see better colors on the one that's alive and if you see a soil that
has a healthy relationship between the living top soil oil and you know the less living subsoil you're not going to
be able to identify Horizon a and Horizon B it will be a beautiful Spectrum where you can't identify a line
that separates um the dead mineral world are integrated with the living topsoil you can't you
can't identify the line you know they're there but it's this beautiful Spectrum it's not like boundary lines so is that
something that people could do themselves are those tests that people could do themselves because it seems like that would be wonderful to engage
people globally to do that for applying biodynamic preps so chromatography
anyone can do you just need silver nitrate and sodium hydroxide and filter paper that's but it is it costs less
than a dollar to do a round of tests like it's cheap enough it's used worldwide there's a great book I don't
know if it's still being published chromatographia it's in Spanish beautiful photographs and even if you
don't read Spanish you can look through it and you can tell what they're doing because the pictures are very very clear
they show an example of soil treated with Roundup and it's just blank with a
dead ring like white just water no life at all and you can see what happens
under very particular treatments but yeah chromatography is wonderful for people to learn because you can have
your conventional soil test and the picture the two together sending more than either apart will be wonderful for
that to be an archive you know kind of a global archive sort of a wisdom Bank of these images you know it's biodynamics
practice more widely in certain countries is it more popular in Europe than here I'm just wondering where it's most is prevalent even though it is a
global practice it's most prevalent in Europe there's a lot of it in India though like it is
growing faster in India than anywhere else like it's it's incredible and some of India's five-year plans and their
agriculture uh Department include biodynamics not just but list the
biodynamic preparations and how to make them as part of this is what we're supporting so they're taking the
biodynamic movement in India is going through the very difficult process of engaging the bureaucracy lobbying and
making sure this is something that is consciously supported for the future but they're making more preparations in
India probably than the rest of the world combined now like it's it's absolutely exploding I'm not surprised
though because there is such an incredible Resurgence going on in India right now in regenerative farming and
there's so many things happening in Andhra Pradesh and uh the small scale farmers are really rising up so it's
it's amazing you know these days we see biodynamic certificate education on some food labels is this becoming more
widespread and could you share if you know how that certification is granted the Demeter certification is based on
first meeting the organic standard plus the biodynamic requirements which have
certain requirements for wildlife protection zones you have to sacrifice certain amount of your farm for that
dedicated purpose you need habitat need certain regenerative practices cover crops crop rotation all of this gets
added in plus all the biodynamic preparations have to be used but the
Baseline is following the organic standard but it's organic plus okay got it what do you say to people
who might say that biodynamics is pseudoscience and because you can't maybe some of these things are not some
things are measurable and some things are not just like you Courtney had said we don't know exactly how it works but
we know it works and there are certain things that are Mysteries naturism three no one can say I know everything top to
bottom about nature that's part of the nature itself it's meant to be a mystery it's not meant to be something that we
figure out so I have to say to that well let's say most of the decisions we make on a
day-to-day basis are not based on science not based on studies I mean the relationships we're in we're not it's
not based on having you know a thousand relationships and done statistical analysis and then said okay that's the
right one a lot of mistakes I guess that's not most of life and that's okay
the question is do you get results and is it repeatable under different environments and
biodynamics has shown that but the problem here's the problem with research is who's going to pay for something that
people can make in their own backyards to exploit that like you can't patent
the moon there's not a lot of research they'd like to try someone
like oh you're using the moon calendar but there's there's no money in that
because you can't control that so yeah good double-blind studies it costs a lot
of money and there's no money in something you can make in your backyard so unless they were to control it and
patent in trademark it but it's too it's already out there it's common knowledge now anybody can do this and yeah
yeah exactly yeah are there farms practicing biodynamics at scale or do
you think that is something harder to practice on larger Farms they are practicing it on scale Alex
podolinski who since passed but in Australia he helped advise on millions
of Acres of farms in Australia and they have very difficult growing conditions
if I remember correctly from his lectures that they don't have groundwater so they're entirely
dependent on rain so very fragile farming conditions now if that can
happen there can you can do it anywhere now I know a guy Lloyd Nelson and he's
actually helping advise on a ranch I think it's 50 000 Acres out west and they're having to figure out ways to you
know apply on a large scale um in Australia they've gone as far as using helicopters to apply phrase so
it's doable as much as farming is doable on a large scale because the question is
how do you get these bio stimulants spread out over your farm well you were spraying something beforehand so that
part's scalable but whether you can manage it properly and tend to properly and time it right those are a whole
other whole other set of questions but what do you think about that though I mean you know with these large-scale
sort of the industrial farming how that came in and and sort of it quickly
surpassed the small scale Farms family farms uh you know to hear about things being sprayed by helicopter is that the
future of farming you know is it that we need to go back to many many many many more small-scale Farms versus these
large-scale Farms I mean what do you feel about there's some statistic I'd seen
relatively recently that more than half of the world's food currently still
comes from small farms and the myth is that small farms can't feed the world
the fact is that they already do I do right yeah and so yeah if ever like most
Farms are actually under five acres worldwide they're small so which puts my
farm which is about 40. yeah I'm up there with Monsanto in the large
right and when you think about that I'm like wow yeah that's a lot of small farms feeding a lot of people and
there's no reason that we couldn't shift back to that we you don't need a lot if you tend it correctly you nurture that
spot it becomes more fertile every year not less and that's where we've lost sight of that when Europeans first
showed up in Australia they did soil tests most countries they weren't doing soil tests when Europeans showed up they
did in Australia some of the soil was over 30 percent organic matter now
you're lucky to find anything over two percent oh my god wow that's incredible
so that's what mechanized industrial agriculture has done there used to be a huge reservoir of stuff that took a very
long time to build up and gone like that it's like lighting a match and all Burns
off all right that's kind of the history right of of going from soil to dirt what what would you say are is biodynamic
agriculture or biodynamics being taught at all and the Waldorf schools
um if someone's involved in the Waldorf School there's usually some connected Garden doesn't mean they're making the
preparations but they may use them they may tend the garden biodynamically but
for me I think the most transformative element is actually the farmer or Gardener making the preparation now when
I first made them I failed they didn't turn it up they were awful okay this if it can be done wrong it can
be done right and they're like all right there's a quality standard it's not just a magic rest of these you do this and
it's poof turns out no it can turn out like crap and it did so I got better at
it but after that I've done that it's changed my imagination it changed how I
see things it changes what I put together and it has opened up new possibilities for other remedies on the
farm by practicing making them not just using them but the activity of making them has changed me on like a soul level
more than spring spraying is good that helps the soil that helps the Earth that
helps the food quality but making the preparation that change something in here and that I think is probably one of
the least emphasized Parts but I think everyone should be making them as much as possible they'll also be I mean we
talk now about indigenous microorganisms well if you're making your own preparations on farm with plant parts
and animal parts from that area it's custom tailored to your spot and
that's a better remedy so why was it that making the preparation was so
particularly transformative to you that process the process was transformative
to me because I began to see how certain parts of an animal are analogous to
certain plants out in nature and how they actually belong together that there is a digestive process
happening in this plant there's a kidney process happening in that plant and
I think before we had all the noise of modern Consciousness there was a more
direct awareness if you looked at a plant before all of this the layers of
noise were added you could see what the plant could do for you because you would feel that
kinship oh that belongs to the kidneys oh that belongs to the stomach and people would just know that and that
there's something to the geometry of it but it also resonates with there's a geometry of it that's in you as well and
because the human being is this special Confluence of everything we can recognize all sorts of things and I
don't think people had to study to find these remedies it wasn't trial and error there's certain people who just knew
because they could see and we've lost that but it by working with the preparations it kind of helps peel back
some layers and you start to recognize intimations of that again
yeah well things are being threaded back together welding back together you know it's not just the Seeing it's also the
hearing or being told right where we have times when we have that intuition
that's coming from Spirit or whatever you want to call that whatever your word for that is could you speak about the
biodynamic planting calendar yes the biodynamic planting calendar was
developed by Maria tune her books are all excellent they're somewhat beautifully Illustrated beautiful
photographs but she developed it based on a lot of research she did planting by the moon
with the sun and a certain sign planets that particular conjunctions and if you
look at her photographs is there's some pretty compelling evidence that where the planets are
changes how plants germinate I'd like to think of it as if you have a planet
that's changing direction it's a bit like the Doppler effect but
there's this magnetic twisting that occurs if you germinate something as the planet is changing direction from our
perspective it's like it starts a twisting process and you end up with getting carrots that are all twisted and
they fracture instead of an ice coherent form yeah it's just but we're usually just
not aware of where the planets are so it just looks I guess that one turned out weird this set scene font
I don't know I love hearing about that well I think that just it's a testament to kind of we
filled our life with so many things that don't actually matter but back in the ancient times we actually could tend to
things like the soil be observant like a a Taoist or any kind of an animist how
we used to live was much more connected and attuned to to the realities of nature
many farmers and people in general experience some form of supply chain issues during the pandemic and I'm
wondering if Josephine Porter was impacted by any of that even though you know biodynamics is you're meant to be
kind of closed loop on your Farms but how were there any issues or concerns
around that we didn't have a lot of issues on that point because until this year actually
this this coming month or where cows are finally arriving for the Josephine Porter Institute so all of that will be
self-contained with Josephine Porter which is wonderful because you weren't having your own cows before on the land
no right um we use grass-fed ones that had been treated with biodynamic preparations and were tended and they
moved through the area we're on the Josephine Porter Institute Farm but they'd be harvested from there but now
it's about it's touched it's time for the herd to just live there so that's
wonderful but most of the sourcing was not directly impacted since most of it is
you know herbs and those we seem to have problem getting yarrow chamomile nettle
those weren't too difficult and then we grow a lot of them as well so that part was not affected but sales were
definitely affected because you know it hit everybody although at the same time so many people
turn to gardening and farming and on a very very small scale so I think maybe
it takes time to cycle that back around but I feel that there's definitely a movement of more people back to the land
back to growing back to some kind of connection to Nature because I think people know not all people yet but
people do recognize that time that we must make a shift so Stuart thank you so
much for joining us today with could you tell listeners how they can remain in contact with Josephine Porter Institute
or you and what what's happening with the biodynamics globally you can stay in touch with the Josephine
Porter Institute at JPI biodynamics.org we've got all of the different biodata preparations there a
bookstore and we're also going to be offering workshops through the year where people can come there'll be food
they can learn to make the preparations themselves and yeah that's the main thing that's our main website we're also
on Instagram Facebook JPI biodynamics but yeah that's it
thank you so much I I can definitely adjust to the wonders of biodynamics having used the formulations the
preparations myself and we have seen sort of these mystical experience of non-fruiting trees all of
a sudden fruiting and it makes all the difference in the world as you say to put the nutrients back in the soil and
and also connect ourselves on a cosmic level so thank you so much for joining
us Stuart and all the Legacy from Steiner on down
that continue this work to this day thank you to Our Guest Stuart Lundy and thank you to our listeners for joining
us this has been biodynamics a holistic approach to farming and gardening
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