Understanding Biodynamics
If you’d like a good clear introduction to biodynamics, Understanding Biodynamics is an excellent New Zealand primer.
This 60-page booklet covers a surprising amount of fascinating detail about things like the biodynamic preparations, the moon, stars and cosmic forces, and ways of measuring the quality and life force of food plants. There are numerous photos that complement the text.
The following is a short extract from Understanding Biodynamics, published with kind permission of the author.
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The earth needs biodynamics
When organic food first became available in New Zealand, people bought it because they were concerned about their health. In later years, this focus changed, the horizon broadened, and nowadays many people buy organic because they want to support a growing system that has a positive impact on the environment.
Similarly, you can regards biodynamics simply as a way to improve your soil and stimulate microorganisms. But if you see the preparations as something more – as a gift to Papatūānuku / Gaia / Pachamama / the Earth Being – it puts it all in a different light.
Just as humans are not just bones and tissues and brain cells and hormones, so land is not just soil and plants and trees and animals. Many people today have come to view the Earth as Gaia – not just a planet that supports life, but a dynamic, self-regulating super-organism.
It is apparent that over the last hundred years or more, Gaia has been sorely abused, her core processes – such as the soil’s ability to self-regulate, cycle nutrients, and hold carbon – have been badly disrupted, her metabolic coherence fragmented.
Biodynamics is the practical means by which humanity can consciously participate in nurturing the Earth herself, by encouraging her innate ‘homeostatic’ ability, i.e. her power to sustain herself in a state of stable balance. This is does through the special biodynamic preparations which work on a non-material level.
It’s an approach intended to heal the wounds inflicted by materialistic agriculture: not only working with the Earth’s inherent life forces but also enabling a stronger connection between cosmos and earth – thus restoring Gaia’s balance and health for future generations.
Recognising Gaia as a living being instils a profound sense of reverence and duty towards the land. This act of care elevates farming from a purely material trade to a spiritual practice of Earth stewardship. We can be the agent through which this healing can happen. Gaia needs us as much as we need her.
Author bio
Gita Krenek has practised biodynamics since 1980, and is the author of several books about biodynamics which are available via Biodynamics New Zealand’s online shop here.
