Opening the Door to Biodynamics

When I joined the staff of the Biodynamic Association (BDA) in 2011, the organization had a big communications problem. Most people either had never heard of biodynamic agriculture, or thought it had something to do with dancing naked under the full moon with a cow horn. One of the biggest challenges to communicating about biodynamics is that it is rooted in the work of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, a European philosopher and scientist who gave thousands of dense lectures in German, including a course on agriculture in 1924. Some people who are drawn to biodynamics — predominantly older people of European descent — resonate deeply with Steiner’s words, and that was reflected in the demographics of the BDA membership at the time I started. However, many others who are interested in biodynamics — especially those who are younger and from different cultural backgrounds — often find Steiner to be impenetrable. I was among those who did not relate to Steiner’s lectures, but I was inspired to apply for the job at the BDA because as a farm apprentice, I had experienced firsthand the capacity of biodynamic practices to bring vibrant health and vitality to soil and plants. As I joined the BDA and began to develop and coordinate biodynamic education and farmer training programs, I quickly realized how important it would be to translate the essence of biodynamics into language, images, and experiences that broader and more diverse audiences would resonate with and understand. 

My first major effort to open the door to biodynamics was through the 2012 Biodynamic Conference, for which I took the lead on programming in collaboration with the BDA’s Executive Director at the time. We iterated many possible conference themes in consultation with the conference planning committee, and landed on “Sacred Agriculture” to evoke the spiritual foundations of biodynamics and create space for other sacred approaches to farming and gardening within the conference. We curated a program with dozens of practical and philosophical workshops from within and outside the biodynamic community, including Arvol Looking Horse and Devon Strong speaking about the Lakota approach to biodynamics, and a keynote from Charles Eisenstein on sacred economics.

In order to promote the conference beyond the existing biodynamic community, we engaged a graphic designer to create visual materials that would draw in new participants, and found volunteers to distribute posters and flyers throughout the region. We doubled conference attendance from the previous high of 350 people to an astounding 700 participants, at least half of whom were attending a biodynamic conference for the first time. Over the next eight years, I co-organized five more conferences with the BDA, continuing to invite and welcome more people into biodynamics through our selection of themes and speakers, communications and outreach, scholarships, and the way we held space and created conference culture. 

As our conferences grew and awareness of biodynamic agriculture increased, we still didn’t have a good introduction to biodynamics that was longer than a paragraph and shorter than a book. My multiple efforts to encourage established biodynamic educators to write something did not yield what I felt was needed, so I eventually realized I would need to take the lead on defining the core principles and practices of biodynamics in clear and accessible language. I spent several months writing the first version of the text, then invited half a dozen colleagues to review and contribute to successive drafts. I took photographs and curated others’ images to illustrate the concepts, worked with our research program coordinator to reference published papers to support the scientific statements in the text, and collaborated with our lead communications staff person to create a layout that made the content easy to take in. Simultaneously, I began giving introductory biodynamic workshops at conferences such as Soil Not Oil and the Permaculture Convergence, developing a robust slide deck of visuals and exploring different ways to language the concepts. The definition of Biodynamic Principles and Practices that I created, in all of its forms — print publication, web page, conference presentations, webinars, video recordings, and a series of Instagram posts — has made biodynamic agriculture accessible to many thousands of people, and continues to be referenced by other organizations and in the media. 

As I stepped into leading the BDA as Co-Director (in 2015) and then Executive Director (in 2017), I expanded my public communications to two other key elements of opening the door to biodynamics: social justice and fundraising. I led the development of the BDA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion statement with a small group of board and staff members. I sought to illuminate the intrinsic connections between the core principles of biodynamics and the pursuit of justice in member emails, conversation salons, letters and articles in the Biodynamics journal, and my opening and closing remarks at our conferences. To support the growth of the BDA’s work, I initiated conversations with donors, authored appeal letters, co-designed and promoted crowdfunding campaigns, hosted fundraising events, and wrote grant proposals, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. 

One of my most significant communications as a leader of the BDA was my keynote at the 2020 International Biodynamic Conference. The theme of the conference was Finding the Spirit in Agriculture, and I proposed leading a workshop on Spiritual Agriculture and Social Justice, which was accepted along with an invitation to give a keynote speech on the same topic. In my keynote, I shared the story of my own awakening to the deep injustices embedded in agriculture and my journey as a leader to begin to bring social justice into the work of the BDA. My keynote resonated deeply with the hundreds of people gathered from around the world, many of them leaders of the biodynamic organizations in their own countries. Their standing ovation was followed by a nonstop stream of people approaching me with tears in their eyes, asking questions and sharing their commitment to bring the inspiration home, from the moment I finished my speech until I left the conference center the following day. The text of my keynote was shared, quoted, and reprinted in multiple languages, and the video recording has been viewed on YouTube more than 700 times. I continue to hear from people who tell me those words are reverberating and influencing how they carry their biodynamic work forward.