A farming method coined by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in 1938 to describe the practice Steiner introduced at Koberwitz in 1924, certified by Demeter International.
Biodynamic is the English name (Greek bios, life, plus dynamis, force) that Ehrenfried Pfeiffer coined in his 1938 book Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening for the agricultural method Rudolf Steiner introduced in eight lectures at Koberwitz in June 1924. The word names a farm understood as a self-contained organism, worked in rhythm with cosmic and etheric forces, and verified today by the Demeter International standard.
In Steiner's Own Words
Now for the tilling of the soil one important thing should above all be understood. I have often mentioned it among anthroposophists. It is this. We must know the conditions under which the cosmic spaces are able to pour their forces down into the earthly realm. To recognise these conditions, let us take our start from the seed-forming process. The seed, out of which the embryo develops, is usually regarded as a very complicated molecular structure, and scientists are especially anxious to understand it in its complex molecular structure. In simple molecules, they imagine, there is a simple structure; then it grows ever more complicated, till at last we get to the infinitely complex structure of the protein molecule.
What it Means Today
The word arrived fourteen years after the lectures it describes. Steiner himself never used "biodynamic" in print. At Koberwitz, June 7 to 16, 1924, he spoke of "a spiritual-scientific impulse for the renewal of agriculture" and left the naming to the practical farmers who carried the work forward. Pfeiffer, the young chemist who had been at Steiner's side since 1920 and who buried the first batch of Preparation 500 in the garden at Arlesheim, used the German biologisch-dynamisch from 1928 onward and shortened it to Bio-Dynamic on the cover of his Anglophone primer in 1938. The contraction held. The compound is precise: bios for the biological side (soil life, humus, microbiome, crop rotation), dynamis for the formative side (planetary rhythms, the nine preparations 500 through 508, Maria Thun's sowing calendar).
To grow something biodynamic in 2026 is to satisfy a written standard. Demeter International, founded in 1928 and headquartered now in Darmstadt, certifies roughly 7,000 farms across more than 65 countries, with about 250,000 hectares under inspection and more than 1,400 vineyards worldwide. Biodynamic farmers since 1924 have worked with the proposition that a farm becomes self-sufficient when its own animals, plants, compost, and water hold a living conversation with the wider cosmos. The word is the shortest possible name for that conversation.
Where to Read More
- Agriculture Course, GA 327, full text (Pfeiffer preface in our corpus)
- Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts, GA 26
- Buy Agriculture (GA 327) from SteinerBooks
- The Agriculture Course by Rudolf Steiner: The Birth of Biodynamic Farming
- Demeter: Goddess of the Harvest, Motherhood, and the Mysteries
- Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries: The Great Mother's Grief