Philosopher, metaphysician, mystic, and scientist Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian, developed the biodynamic method of gardening and farming in the early 20th Century. It is fundamentally and practically organic gardening and farming, with its tenets put down by Steiner before what we think of today as organic gardening and farming was even developed. Modern organics came later via Englishman Sir Albert Howard in the 1930s and American J.I. Rodale in the 1940s. Steiner’s insistence that toxic chemicals have no place in the garden or on the farm predated even the development of many of the agricultural chemicals in use by conventional growers today.

But Steiner went far beyond just organic gardening and farming. His vision was much more inclusive. Here’s a capsulization of his thinking:

There is a spiritual world that exists beyond our everyday world, and human beings can make contact with, learn from, and be improved by contact with this spiritual world. We are endowed with the ability to reach this higher plane, but we must develop that ability through study and techniques for awakening ourselves. He claimed to be in contact with that transcendental world, and from it received the ideas that became biodynamic gardening and farming.

Foremost is the idea that a garden or farm is formed in part through the spiritual world’s influences. Also that the cosmos above us and the earth energies below us form a continuum of which the surface-based garden or farm is just a part. So seeds and rooted plants are planted in the ground during the proper phases of the moon. Celestial influences are taken into account.

The garden or farm is thought of as a unified whole that can be organized so that all its life forms are connected and balanced. The garden or farm thus becomes harmoniously balanced among its parts and as a whole, and the whole is balanced within the cosmic framework. A corollary of this axiom is that as few outside inputs to the farm or garden should be made as possible. Everything turns into compost and is recycled. Perhaps the practitioner will import iron and gasoline, but not too much more. The constant recycling of the garden or farm’s organic matter means that a mix of microorganisms and larger plants and animals can develop that are specific to that site, creating food with a taste of the place it’s grown. And as the garden or farm becomes more and more uniquely of the place where it’s sited, unforeseen benefits and unpredictable quirks will accrue. The garden or farm is meant to be one of a kind, just as each human being is one of a kind, and biodynamics is the way to get there.

To aid nature’s processes in the garden or on the farm, the biodynamic practitioner creates homeopathic doses of preparations that encourage the development of humus—a very beneficial substance—in the soil. Other preparations help plants resist fungus, mold, and insect attack. Many people who are new to biodynamics start to lose their grip on the method when it comes to these preparations, because they do seem to be some form of Germanic “magic.” A cow horn is filled with fresh manure and buried overwinter and a preparation made from the horn’s contents when it’s dug up in the spring. Certain herbs are stuffed into a stag’s bladder and buried for a year. Quartz is pounded to dust and stirred into a liquid, then sprayed on crops.

While these preparations seem to verge on mysticism and magic, it’s important to try to see them the way Steiner did: as ways to work with earth and cosmic energies, as he was shown by insights gained from a higher level of consciousness. A lot of research has been done that shows that biodynamics has a very beneficial effect on crops and the great wheel of life in the garden or farm. It’s organic gardening and farming with a transcendental twist. Emerson and Thoreau would have loved it.

Those who disparage organic food often claim it’s too expensive and imply that consumers are being scammed.

Well, it’s true that organic food is often more expensive than conventionally grown food. But let’s examine why a little more closely.

It’s more expensive to control weeds organically. The conventional farmer simply sprays herbicides. One pass through the rows with a pre-emergence herbicide and one more later on in the season is all that’s needed. The organic farmer, on the other hand, has to plow down the weeds several times during the growing season, which uses more fuel for the tractor.

Conventional farming is like a paint-by-numbers painting. Put down herbicides on this date. Spray fungicide on that date. Fertilize with soluble chemical fertilizers on another date. Spray for insects on yet another date. Organic farming is more like doing a real painting. You watch the season develop and respond as nature would rather than on a set schedule. You pay for farm animals that control weeds and eat insects, as well as yield meat, eggs, and milk.

Crop rotations may mean some of the land is allowed to lie fallow for a season, giving it a rest from growing crops, and from making money.

All of these factors and more make organic farming somewhat more expensive than conventional farming—until you factor in the hidden costs of conventional farming.

The government subsidizes many crops on the conventional farm, even paying some farmers for not growing certain crops. Who pays for this? You do, through your taxes.

When farm workers get sick from exposure to agricultural chemicals, who pays their doctor bills? You do, through your taxes that support health clinics and Medicaid. And who pays for the illness chemical-laden, GMO-riddled, antibiotic-infected food causes in your family? We all do.

When the routine use of antibiotics in cattle, milk cows, chickens, and other farm animals breeds antibiotic-resistant strains of dangerous bacteria, who pays for the sickness these bacteria cause and for the cost of developing new drugs? You do.

When runoff from feedlots and other confinement facilities for farm animals fouls ground waters and waterways, who pays for clean-up? You do, if there’s any clean-up at all.

When tainted food is discovered and recalled, who pays for the illness that’s caused and for the government bureaus that monitor and enforce the recalls? You do.

When conventional farming depletes the soil of organic matter and renders it vulnerable to erosion, who’s paying the cost? Our children and grandchildren, who will inherit lifeless land. And who pays for dredging the silt that clogs rivers and streams after erosion has carried the soil into them? We do, through our taxes and the Army Corps of Engineers.

There are many more areas in which the true cost of conventional food is hidden from consumers. These costs are real, and we all pay them through our taxes or by other means. But pay them we do.

By comparison, organic food is far cheaper than conventional food.

The news was astounding. When researchers tested the blood in the umbilical cords of newborn babies, they found 273 different commercial chemicals. That means that all those chemicals passed the placental barrier and reached the developing fetus’s body. Babies today are swimming in a contaminated sea of chemicals called the amniotic fluid.

Then the news broke that there are about 80,000 chemicals sold commercially in the U.S. today, used in almost every manufacturing process, from TV dinners to furniture polish. But surely the Environmental Protection Agency or the Food and Drug Administration has checked these chemicals for toxicity and issued guidelines for their safe use, right?

Wrong.

“Under current laws,” writes Lyndsey Layton in The Washington Post for August 1, 2010, “the government has little or no information about the health risks posed by most of the 80,000 chemicals on the U.S. market today.” She reports, for example, that Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops, and Honey Smacks this summer because of elevated levels of 2-methylnaphthalene in the packaging. Complaints came in from consumers about a strange taste and odor, and some cases of nausea and diarrhea were reported. Kellogg issued a statement saying a panel of experts they hired concluded there was no harmful material in the products. But the FDA has no data on 2-methylnaphthalene’s impact on human health. The EPA also has no data on the chemical’s health and safety—even though they’ve been seeking that information from the chemical industry for 16 years.

But it gets worse. When the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976, it exempted from control 62,000 chemicals then in common use, including 2-methylnaphthalene. Furthermore, chemicals developed and sold into commerce since 1976 don’t have to be tested for safety. The chemical companies are supposed to forward any safety data to the government, which will then decide if further testing is needed or if the chemical should be banned. Talk about a disincentive for doing safety testing! The chemical industry isn’t in business to protect the health and safety of the public. It’s in business to make chemicals and sell them for a profit.

Now, nature has created a system for keeping harmful substances away from babies in their mothers’ wombs. Among many other functions, the placenta can screen out toxic substances. But the placental system developed before there were manmade chemicals, and the screening system prevents mostly natural toxics—toxins in plants for the most part–from reaching the baby. The fact that 273 synthetic chemicals crossed the placenta from the mother to the baby shows that not only does the placenta fail to deal with manmade synthetic chemicals, but that we all are living in a chemical swamp, and that no one is doing much testing at all about the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals.

There is something you can do. Eat organic food and only organic food. Many if not most of the chemicals in our bodies come in through the food we eat. By its very definition and by law, organic food cannot be grown or processed with synthetic chemicals.

For the health and safety of us all, and especially for women either pregnant or thinking about conceiving, organic food is pure food that will not add to the toxic load we all carry.

I recently tasted a group of wines made by Paul Dolan and grown near Hopland in Mendocino County, California. Dolan was for many years at the helm of Fetzer winery in Hopland, a pioneering winery using organically-grown grapes. His tenure at Fetzer was marked by many green innovations, including the planting of clover, vetch, and umbelliferous crops between the vine rows in order to enrich the soil and provide habitat for beneficial insects that keep the plant-eating insects in check. Dolan has taken that approach one step further with his ‘Deep Red’ wines, whose vineyards are certified Biodynamic by Demeter, the certifying agency for Biodynamic farms.

The wine that impressed me the most was his 2007 Deep Red—a blend of over 50 percent Syrah with the rest Petite Sirah and Grenache. Yes, it shows rich, round flavors with a deeply fruity core and sturdy structure formed from the iron-rich, deep red soils for which the wine is named. But beyond that, it shows purity.

What do I mean by purity? Think of a watercolor painting. When the colors are applied correctly, they have a clear, pure, jewel-like appearance. Amateur watercolorists often overlay complementary colors, which produces muddy results. In a wine, purity is like the jewel colors in a fine watercolor painting. No muddiness. No thick and impenetrable areas of flavor. You can taste right through the flavors, and they are bright and transparent to the palate.

How does Dolan produce wines of such purity? The answer lies in his Biodynamic approach. Biodynamics is based on organic farming, but goes further. The farm is viewed as a whole, living organism. How is any organism kept healthy? Proper nutrition. In the Biodynamic system, that means recycling every scrap of organic matter through the transformative composting process and returning it to the land. Compost is the engine at the center of life. It is the destination and source of life, all at once. As Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, “That which is Nature’s mother is her tomb; what is her burying grave, that is her womb.”

Biodynamic culture also means having mobile chicken coops so the hens are always scratching at new areas and finding insects and their larvae to eat, and fertilizing the area with their droppings, before the mobile coop is moved again. It means setting up housing for owls and bats—scavengers who keep rodents and flying insect pests in check. It means having fresh water and insectiaries so beneficial insects can easily pass through their life stages, cleaning the farm of pests as they do so.

It means not only thinking of the farm horizontally—across the fields and vineyards—but vertically: taking into account the phases of the moon and the rising and falling of water in the earth. It means being humble about what we human beings know of the life on the farm and the energies of heaven and earth, so that we are open to learn, for there is no end of knowledge in nature and none of us can know it all. But we can improve, and on a Biodynamic farm such as Dolan’s, the improvements are all toward the health of the farm as a living whole organism.

Because of the health of the vines and his Biodynamic approach, Dolan produces wines of crystal purity. The wine lets the light come shining through.

What do I mean by “fake food?” Perhaps fake food is best described by first defining what I mean by real food.

Suppose a young steer is put out to pasture. It grazes on the pasture’s grass, eating the food that its body is built for. It has access to clean water. Maybe there’s a grove of trees for the steer to use for shade when the sun gets too hot. It’s a calm, clean, low-key life for this steer. It’s not stimulated by growth hormones. It’s not fed antibiotics and would only be given antibiotics if it got a bacterial infection. Its urine and feces are naturally recycled into the land. It lives a good life until one day it is led quietly and gently into a low area filled with odorless carbon dioxide, and it painlessly passes out from lack of oxygen. Then, unconscious, it is killed. Butchering takes place in clean and sanitary conditions. The various cuts of meat go their separate ways and the leftovers (horns, hooves, hide, bones, intestines, etc.) are sold off.

One of the cuts of meat is a top sirloin steak. This steak is aged in ideal cool conditions for 21 days, long enough for the flavor of the meat to be enhanced by the actions of enzymes naturally present in the meat. This is also long enough for some of the intercellular collagen and other tough materials to soften, rendering the meat tender as well as flavorful.

You or I go the supermarket or butcher and buy this “organic, grass-fed, aged” steak. The meat has all the flavor it’s supposed to have, but without any chemicals, antibiotics, pesticides, fattening grains, or other unnatural additives—including water. Did you know many meats, especially pork products, are pumped full of water? Up to 30 percent of the weight of some hams is water, sold to you at many dollars per pound.

Our grass-fed steak has much more of healthful conjugated linoleic acid—a beneficial essential fatty acid—than ordinary beef. It tastes great.  This is real food.

Fake food looks like the real thing, but it’s not. Because the steers are raised in confinement pens, they are routinely given antibiotics because they live amid deep pools of their own waste. The grains they are fed have been grown with pesticides and herbicides, chemicals that can pass into their bodies and lodge in their fat. These grains fatten up the animals, filling their tissues with hard fats that cause cardiovascular disease in humans. The meat is flushed into unnaturally weak growth by hormones. Slaughter is efficient, but not easy. Butchering is often quick and sometimes unsanitary. I know. I’ve seen it.

Back on the farm, that organic steer’s life and death have left no permanent scars or depleted, eroded soil. The steer may have eaten annual or perennial grasses nearly to the ground, but the grasses’ roots continue to hold the soil together during winter rains. All the animals’ wastes are sparsely spread in the pasture, and washed by rains into the soil where they fertilize next spring’s crop of fine, clean, green grass.

But back in the feedlot, the concentrated pools of fecal matter are washed into the groundwater where they foul wells, hyper-fertilize streams, ponds, and lakes, forcing the growth of clogging, oxygen-depleting algae, and causing the eutrophycation of the water. Fish die. Chemicals used in the feedlots wash into waterways, further damaging them. The feedlot is a stinking mess that is spread to the surrounding watershed. The conventional steak you buy looks real, but it’s not. It’s a commodity, processed using modern technology and much of that technology has unintended consequences that are detrimental to our health.

The bottom line is taste. Which steak do you think tastes best? Even if you couldn’t tell a difference, knowing how the steak came to be would enhance its flavor.

Now multiply these kinds of insights throughout our food supply. Compare how an organic potato, strawberry, or head of broccoli is raised with how they are grown conventionally. Be aware that researchers in both the U.K. and U.S. are finding major diminishment of mineral levels and declining levels of other nutrients in common vegetables grown conventionally. But not in organically-grown vegetables. One scientist at UC Davis did a 10-year study and reported, in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, that organic vegetables contained up to 30 percent more phytochemicals than conventional vegetables. Phytochemicals is a scientific term for natural nutrients created by plants within their own tissues. They are the goodies that are so good for us.