Looking Toward the Future of Biodynamics

Originally published 2025-12-02. By Stewart Kahn Lundy, JPI Biodynamics.

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“Biodynamics is not an intellectual path, it is a path of the will.” - Hugh Courtney, founder of the Josephine Porter Institute.

Farming of any kind is hard work.

It doesn’t matter if it’s conventional farming or organic farming: it always means hard work. Biodynamic farming asks even more of us, extending our recognition of moral responsibility generations into the future — not just to our bottom line or our immediate blood relations, but including wild nature and beings we may never meet in this lifetime. And we need your help.

As we are never “outside” Nature, we can never be outside the domain of moral responsibility, whether or not we recognize it. As fish swim in water, we human beings are perpetually immersed in an ocean of consequential interpersonal relationships. Wherever meaning intrudes into our lives, this moral recognition extends back to everything else. But the price of meaning one must pay is setting aside immediate pleasure. Creature comforts never really make us truly happy any more than material possessions do, because we are not designed for merely mammalian contentment. We are here for a purpose distinct to our species.

As Rilke writes:

Yes — the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.

It makes sense that the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model often struggles to succeed. The attrition rate for CSAs nationwide is regularly 50% or more because people appreciate the notion of a subscription to fresh vegetables, but often lack the willpower to translate this spiritual affinity into practical cooking.

Such farmers often ask customers to pay more money than they might at a grocery store for something that will require more time and energy from them later — to cook. That’s a hard sell if funds are limited or if it’s just inconvenient. Yes, real food tastes better. Yes, it will save on medical bills later. Yes, it is environmentally responsible. But you don’t get sustainable, healthy, and delicious without investing extra effort — or as we like to say in anthroposophical circles, will forces. The good life is never automatic; it takes more effort, not less!

As Rudolf Steiner told Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, “This is a problem of nutrition. Nutrition as it is today does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action.”1 If people already can’t turn their spiritual ideals into action, how do we ever expect to have the willpower to go out of their way to eat such enriched food? Someone has to step up to bring this quality into food in the first place, which means we need a special kind of person — people like you — who exercise their willpower to do more than is merely necessary for the world.

But if food lacks the vital forces necessary to turn ideas into constructive activity, people won’t even have the willpower to cook the food they know is better for them. This is a Catch-22 situation that can only be resolved by active, consistent intervention in service by those of us who are practiced at working with resistant materials and who have the patience born of any active craft. One must imagine the harrowing of hell or the free return of a bodhisattva to help those imprisoned in their own karma. A rupture of grace from above is the birth of human freedom.

Freedom, like inner peace, is a wonderful thing to attain, but it is also like money — these are means to the proper end of loving service. Whenever ends become confused with means, this is the false god Mammon. We get figures like Ebenezer Scrooge, who loses his beloved by fixating on the money he needs for a good life.

Whatever freedom we have should be used in the active service of the spiritual world and our fellow human beings. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. As Björk sings in “Berghaim” with Rosalía, “The only way to save us is through divine intervention.” As the Earth is only alive through the constant influx of light from the Sun, so we are only free from the imprisonment of our personal karma through the ongoing sacrifice of divinized souls scattered through society. In short and without hyperbole: we can’t do this without you.

The question is whether we identify with how something serves us subjectively and the temporary sensation it gives us — “sympathy” or “antipathy” — or instead with how it benefits the world and others. Am I merely one selfish dot among other points, or is my true identity the field of interstitial connections, the recognition of the radical betweenness of all emergent beings? When we learn to identify our most authentic self with the expressions we elicit from others, our center has moved outside our small selves and towards the periphery. What shines in the face of the Other is us. When the question “How can I help you?” becomes our first response to a situation, the barricades of egotism begin to crumble.

There is little more exhausting than sacrificing for something we do not love, so the question is: how much do we really love the Earth and others? How much is it mere emoting? How much goodwill do we really have? Is it vague well-wishing, or are we willing to do the concrete work to improve our shared world? And how can we cultivate more genuine love devoted enough to live out into service? The wellsprings of the Spirit are infinitely deep if we choose to drink and be replenished.

Today, I, Stewart Lundy, write you as the Executive Director of the Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics (JPI). In some ways, I am an unusual voice for biodynamics. My interests go back to playing music on many instruments, singing, painting, and, on the other hand, to Platonic philosophers, hermeticism, alchemy, and theologians of worldwide religious streams — it is as if I will not be satisfied until I have known something of the entire world. As Goethe says, “If we want to approach a living perception of nature, we must become as mobile and flexible as nature herself.”2 While my education is in the classical liberal arts, it is gardening and farming that ground me, preventing my aesthetic and philosophical aspects from soaring beyond practical reality. Farming since 2010 is probably the most significant part of my experience that gives my vision of biodynamics relevance. Though I have probably studied more of Rudolf Steiner than any other single author, he makes up merely 3.5% (41) of the books I’ve tracked on my ongoing reading list, not counting books I never got around to adding and not counting rereading any Steiner titles. As the oceans are about 3.5% sea salt, my conceptual universe is permeated by the subtle brine of anthroposophy.

Having just turned 41, I am just about the same age as the nonprofit organization for which I work. This is a curious dynamic, because what this organization goes through in its own biographical structure is in some ways mirrored in me. Perhaps this is because of a pledge I made years ago, binding my fate to the angel of biodynamics. Fortunately, the spiritual world does not seek perfect prophets, but suitable servants. As the lotus grows out of the mud, not in spite of, but because of it, so the new is ever born out of the old — the next season rises out of the inherited forces of last season’s compost. There is no lotus without the muck. There is no way to cut the flower from its roots in the darkness any more than biodynamic food can be produced without soil. As the existential comedy I Heart Huckabees says, “No mud, no magic!”

Though he almost certainly didn’t say this, the following quote attributed to C.G. Jung nonetheless rings with a certain amount of truth: “Life really does begin at 40. Up until then you are just doing research.” The ego experiences the arrival of its death as a wall of impenetrable darkness and can only see its impending demise. The ego cannot imagine any possible life beyond the destruction of its carefully curated image. And yet… even though the ego dies to itself and all it prided itself in, something slips through the eye of a needle. Crossing the abyss is a thin red line of an unqualified divine “I” with its rich baggage left behind.

One of the most hopeful things to me is remembering how many people are using preparations made from the sweet cows on our own farm. Thousands of people worldwide who garden and farm infuse their soil with vital forces from the alchemy of not just any cows — these cows. Vital forces from here are now everywhere. The will forces from oneself and one’s community are still at work all around the world. Will forces are always individual, but when we work together, their benefits are exponential.

As many of you know, the Josephine Porter Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, which means, as its founder (and my mentor) Hugh Courtney liked to say, “JPI is in the business of putting itself out of business.” What is JPI for? It is simple: JPI exists to close the gap between the ideal scenario in which everyone can make their own biodynamic preparations and the messiness of reality, where this is not practical. Ideally, each community would make its own biodynamic remedies; in practice, it is more complicated. There are regulations, difficulty sourcing materials, and often the general isolation of agricultural life compared to urban living. JPI exists to help close this gap. When it is not practical for them to make their own preparations, JPI provides them at a modest price.

The heart of the biodynamic work at JPI is intrinsically a gift economy. I myself donate my time to this mission every week above and beyond what I could ever expect to be compensated for, because that’s not the point. Board members donate their time, and community members volunteer gladly — not to mention the elemental world! My farm donates all the manure and herbs used to make the preparations. No one can do this work except in an attitude of service. As Hugh Courtney would say, there is something to be done with the making and improving of these preparations almost every single day of the year. Only such a complete commitment can guarantee the best quality, but it is the kind of obligation where you can never totally “clock out.” The Great Work of biodynamics is all-encompassing: Healing the Earth.

Our sworn mission is to serve Life. As Rudolf Steiner puts it, “The white magician would impart to other souls the spiritual life he bears within him. The black magician has the urge to kill, to create a void around him in the astral world because this void affords him a field in which his egoistic desires may disport themselves. He needs the power which he acquires by taking the vital force of everything that lives, that is to say, by killing it. That is why the first sentence on the tables of black magic is: Life must be conquered.”3 Implicit here is that the opposite, an ethic of serving Life, is that of the magus on the side of light. When we die, whatever was worthless in our actions turns to ash, and the light we gave away in life continues to shine forth. Do we leave the world a brighter place when this one brief flame goes out?

I donate manure from our fields, herbs from our gardens, and sheaths from our animals. Were these merely bought and sold as commodities, their quality would be very different. Moreover, our all-volunteer board is not paid for its good work; instead, they donate their time to further this mission, seeking not how it might benefit them but how it might benefit us — you, me, and all of us seeking to regenerate our shared Earth.

Yes, JPI technically sells biodynamic preparations, but in the scheme of things, if one were to pay someone a living wage to do what is so intrinsically a mission-driving act of service, each compost preparation set would easily cost well over $200 instead of the $45 we sell them for. We should never forget that those who produce these preparations are like a priesthood who must be kept alive for the work to grow, but both the priests and the laity are essentially volunteers. When you buy preparations and sacrifice your time, energy, and money to bring these special powers to your compost and fields, this is a votive act. Your work helps counterbalance the tidal wave of unconscious living, and when you buy preparations or donate, you help ensure this work continues into the future. It is not enough to talk about biodynamics. We must do something about it. Mere emotive affection adds nothing if it is not strong enough to motivate action. As Goethe says, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

That our preparations reach around the world, to dozens of countries, is something we can all be proud of together. You go forth wherever these preparations travel and perform their work!

In addition to its primary base in North America, the Josephine Porter Institute has shipped to an additional forty-one (41) countries: Ireland, Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Chile, Malaysia, Norway, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Denmark, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Dominican Republic, Portugal, Israel, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Hungary, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland, India, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Slovenia, Finland, Argentina, Turkey, Guatamala, Saudi Arabia, Latvia, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, South Africa, and Bulgaria.

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Through concerted effort, we have optimized our website to load faster for lower-bandwidth connections. What does this have to do with biodynamics? Those who could benefit most from biodynamics often do not have unlimited data, so a “bloated” website actually costs them money they can least afford. This isn’t even something I was aware of until recently. I had never imagined that a website that runs well on a fast internet connection might actually cost people real money. To this end, I have reworked the website to load optimized images, always scaled to the user’s screen size (and no larger), and to suspend loading images if the user’s connection is too slow. The result is improved traffic, higher conversion rates, and, most importantly, a lower barrier to entry for biodynamics worldwide. Biodynamics is not a premium item except where it has not yet succeeded; biodynamics should be available to everyone.

As some of you already know, our friends in México have been progressively translating articles into Spanish here, and we thank them for their wonderful ongoing work. Please consider subscribing to support their work here.

When you upgrade your subscription to our Substack here, all this revenue helps us continue our work. Everything you contribute through JPI’s Substack goes directly to new projects, including research, education, and outreach. With your contribution here, we are able to fund renewed educational efforts and help give away the practical knowledge of how to make these preparations to those who need it most. For example, when you subscribe to JPI’s Substack, at $8/month — 27 cents per day — barely more than a quarter! This really adds up for us. Is our work worth 27 cents a day to you?

No contribution is too little. As of the writing of this piece, your contributions together form a community that is contributing $23,098 per year to JPI, and almost ALL of this from hundreds of small paid subscriptions. It may not seem like much to you, but together it is making an enormous difference. These subscriptions don’t earn you points or special discounts, but they do help us keep operating costs down and keep preparation prices affordable for everyone.

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The margins at the Josephine Porter Institute have always been narrow, and we need your help if we want biodynamics to be more than it is today. Subscribe, donate, volunteer, or even just share the word! These are no small acts when we act together. Where two or more are gathered in My name.

I will leave you with a verse from the Herr Doktor Steiner himself:

We are not granted a rest on any step;
The active man must live and strive
From life to life;
As plants renew themselves
From spring to spring,
So man must rise
Through error to Truth,
From fetters into Freedom,
Through sickness and through death
To Beauty, Health and Life.

What would you like to see for the future of biodynamics? How will you be a part of its constructive future?

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Thank you for your time and for being part of this work with us.

Until the last blade of grass is redeemed…

Sincerely,