Steffen Schneider
Reflections on IMA's 2019 Winter Workshop: ...

…an understanding of and feeling for belonging and right relationship to our Earth, to each other and to ourselves are at the heart of any path towards a future that brings well-being for all…

Reflections on IMA's 2019 Winter Workshop: “Belonging – Agriculture as the heart of Environmentalism”
Steffen Schneider
Soils(3) - The Soils of Place, Our Inner ...

“Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.” 
– Edward O. Wilson, 2012

Soils(3) - The Soils of Place, Our Inner Landscapes, Our Social Fields
Steffen Schneider
The “Koberwitz Impulse”—Biodynamics and the ...

Six “windows” onto the “being of agriculture” place it into the current context of time and place, and ground it ecologically, socio-economically, and spiritually. 

The “Koberwitz Impulse”—Biodynamics and the Institute for Mindful Agriculture, Part 2
Steffen Schneider
The “Koberwitz Impulse”—Biodynamics and the ...

The Internet, journals, papers, twitter and the blogosphere are overflowing with talk and conversations on agriculture and food. Since the publication of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006 our awareness and consciousness on food issues has reached new and amazing heights. Already in the early 2000s when the USDA invited public comments on its “Organic Rule” it received more comments than on any issue ever!  What is going on here? Why is this happening, and can we detect some underlying patterns? These questions and a few more are at the root of a new initiative: The Institute for Mindful Agriculture.

The “Koberwitz Impulse”—Biodynamics and the Institute for Mindful Agriculture, Part 1
Steffen Schneider
The 2016 Biodynamic Winter Intensive

The 2016 “Biodynamic Winter Intensive” brought 45 participants (young farmers, food activists, food distributors, landowners and other stakeholders of the agriculture-food system) from North America, Canada and the UK to Hawthorne Valley to explore how agricultural practice can become more mindful of the beautifully coordinated larger rhythms of our celestial universe – its effects on the life of plants and soils, and its earthly reflection through humans caring about food and agriculture.

The 2016 Biodynamic Winter Intensive

farm organism

Get to Know the 3 Soils

Get to Know the 3 Soils

"The greatest challenge of our time is not how to live within the limits of the natural world, or how to overcome such limits. It isn’t about optimizing our planet to better serve humanity or the rest of nature. To engage productively with the world we are creating, we must focus on strategies for working more effectively together across all of our diverse and unequal social worlds…”

 

What Speth and Ellis are pointing to is what we at the Institute for Mindful Agriculture are calling “inner soils” and “social soils”. And I would be remiss not to mention them here as I believe they are as important for a healthy future as the above described soil health. In fact, one central mission at the Institute for Mindful Agriculture is to cultivate the social soil to grow a just, resilient, and regenerative food ecosystem, resulting in the growth of vibrant food sheds throughout our country.