Getting the Word Out – Building the Biodynamic Brand

Posted on Mayo 23, 2023

Alliance staff retreat photo

For the last year, the staff and board of the Biodynamic Demeter Alliance have been working diligently to understand the role we can play in supporting and building the biodynamic community. How do we best support farmers? Businesses? Regional groups? How can regional groups support building a strong biodynamic movement? We are still learning.

Biodynamics can save the world. It’s true. If every farmer and gardener throughout the world grew food and fiber in a way that gave back more than was taken, cultivated fertility and biodiversity of the soil and saw each farm as a whole, interconnected organism, it would change our world.

If every home, business, and farm set aside 10 percent of the land for biodiversity, treated animals with compassion and respect, and perceived all who worked the land...

Living Lands Trust Poised To Amplify Its Efforts For Greater Reach And Impact

Posted on Mayo 5, 2023

As the source of our food, cradle of our communities, and root of local economies, land is vital to our individual and collective health and well-being. Yet every hour in the United States, roughly 150 acres of natural land and 40 acres of farmland are cleared, paved, and built upon—190 acres per hour! At the same time, the biggest challenge facing young farmers is land access, especially for young black and brown farmers. Increasing interest and pressure on land create the need for land-centric organizations that can work innovatively amid the rapid changes of our world today.

Living Lands Trust—originally Yggdrasil Land Foundational—was founded in 2000 as just such an organization. A 21st-century land trust, created in part to help serve the Biodynamic community and provide an example of how we might begin to move beyond the notion of land as property. Land as property...

Conference Sneak Peek: Regenerative Fashion

Posted on Abr 18, 2023

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(L-R: Tunis sheep, Carlton Farms ; flax harvest, Ekoboerderij de Lingeho ; Sekem cotton; Whispering Winds bamboo)

In November 2023, the Biodynamic Community will gather outside Denver, CO, to learn, share and envision what the next 100 years of Biodynamics might bring to people and our planet. More nourishing food? Healthier soil? Changing paradigms about our relationship to each other, nature, and the land? Fashion is one area that often gets overlooked, yet it is pivotal in our modern world. So what is the connection between Fashion and Biodynamics? Ask Arizona Muse, and she will tell you – everything.

“Everything we need, have, and use is grown in the soil,” Arizona says. “This includes the fiber and leather for our clothes, food for our kitchen, wood for our homes, and herbs for medicine.” As someone who...

Women's History Month Profile: An Interview with Sherry Wildfeuer

Posted on Mar 30, 2023

In Honor of Women's History Month, we interviewed Sherry Wildfeuer, who has significantly impacted the Anthroposophic and Biodynamic movements in the United States over the past sixty years. Sherry has been the editor of the Stella Natura Biodynamic planting calendar since 1978 and a co-worker at Camphill Village for 50 years. She is also an active member of the Anthroposophical Society and its Agriculture Section.

How did you first hear about Anthroposophy and Biodynamic agriculture?

I first heard about anthroposophy when I was a freshman in college. I learned about it from a senior named Joel Morrow (who became the editor of the Biodynamic Journal for several years much later), as he had...

Celebrating Women in Biodynamics

Posted on Mar 10, 2023

In honor of Women's History Month, the Biodynamic Demeter Alliance honors the many amazing women in Biodynamic agriculture whose efforts have left a lasting positive legacy on us all. As we collectively cultivate a humanity that is more inclusive and relationship-based, it is essential that we pay attention to our predecessors who quietly held the wisdom while working hard to achieve milestones in the Biodynamic movement that we revere today. Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest, is our figurehead for a reason. Women have always played a key role in shaping Biodynamics, and they continue to do so today.

Most people have heard of Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of DDT and generated such public outcry that it helped to motivate the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air Act, and a host of...

Measuring Ecosystem Services: Regional Wert Study

Posted on Mar 7, 2023

Measuring Ecosystem Services: Regional Wert Study

Every year, Biodynamic farmers across the United States are working hard to build soil, cultivate wild spaces and biodiversity, care for the water and source their fertility on-site or as close to home as possible. As the farm and the land flourishes, the surrounding community benefits as well. This is the gift and the responsibility of a farmer. At the same time, the only source of income most farmers can realize is through the sale of the products they grow. So those bunches of carrots, those heads of lettuce must carry the total expense of the farm work done for the year. Good healthy, nourishing food becomes prohibitively expensive and out of reach for many in order for the farmer to make enough to stay in business.

What if we could change this scenario? What if Biodynamic farmers...

Sacred Place

Posted on Ene 18, 2023

By Sharifa Oppenheimer: We have desecrated sacred place. Having stolen place’s breath and spirit, we deem it empty space, no longer teeming with living presences seen and unseen, with ancestors and heirs.