Wholeness & Holistic Farming

Health suggests wholeness: a living system works through relationships among its parts. Biodynamic farmers use the image of a farm organism to consider soil, plants, animals, water, and people together rather than as isolated inputs.

In 1926, South African Jan Christiaan Smuts published Holism and Evolution, giving a name to the idea of understanding a whole through its relationships. Rudolf Steiner's agricultural lectures preceded that book, and biodynamic practice likewise invites growers to observe the farm as a connected organism.

A mechanic can examine one part while still seeing the whole machine. In a field, growers can compare soil structure, roots, plant vigor, moisture, drainage, and surrounding habitat. Dry places may benefit from shade or ground cover; wet places invite a closer look at water movement, soil structure, and suitable plants. Those observations help guide compost, cover crops, biodynamic preparations, and site-specific water care.

Whole-farm care can also be measured. In a Wisconsin field comparison by Goldstein and colleagues, a biodynamic program with compost and spray preparations plus a nettle-manure compound field spray measured 4,664 kg C/ha of particulate organic-matter carbon, compared with 4,289 kg C/ha in the organic treatment: 9% more in the studied biodynamic program. The measured result belongs to that complete treatment, not to one individual preparation.