Long before the USDA founded the National Organic Program, there was Demeter, a non-profit organization dedicated to Biodynamic farming.
Background
In 1924, Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures to European farmers. Industrialization had transformed farming around the world, introducing new practices like the use of chemical pesticides, antibiotics, and synthetic fertilizers. Farmers grew increasingly concerned with their declining crop vitality, seed virility, and animal health and looked to Steiner’s agricultural course for guidance.
Steiner’s conclusion: we should think of farms as living organisms–self contained, self-sustaining, in sync with nature’s cycles, and solely responsible for creating and maintaining their own health and vitality. He believed the more industrialized model of farming was unsustainable because its methods were destructive to the environment. By focusing on self-sustainbility, Biodynamic farms would reduce dependence on mining of the earth’s natural resources….
