The challenges facing biodynamic agriculture are significant, both socio-politically and economically. The Agricultural Section will address this through the theme of “community” at its annual conference, February 4-7, 2026. Wolfgang Held spoke with section leaders Ueli Hurter and Eduardo Rincón.
How did you come up with the conference title? It reminds me of the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
Ueli Hurter The origin is different: last year, we were in the Flemish part of Belgium with the representatives of the section. There is a level of industrialized agriculture there that I have never seen before: seven cows per hectare! In this ecologically absurd setting sits a small Demeter farm successfully run by two 35-year-olds and their team. They’ve formed five communities in and around the farm. On the farm itself, there is a working community. Then, they have a subscription system with customers, a cooperative with other farms for cultivation, and a cooperative to run a shop in Ghent with other farms. Now, there is a fifth community to buy the land. They can live where it’s implausible to live because they have communities. One of the founders of the farm coined the slogan: “You never farm alone.”
Eduardo Rincón Every place offers its own opportunities and presents its own challenges. What matters is that, no matter where, difficulties are easier to overcome when there is a group that says, “We can do it!” That’s how it is at this farm in Belgium. They develop solutions together for issues of land ownership, forms of trade, and all kinds of cooperation.
The song chanted in sports stadiums goes, “You’ll never walk alone.” That’s the future; it’s a promise. We’re talking about the present!
Hurter That’s how it feels: I’m alone in my work, and no one cares whether I’m doing well or whether I can cope with what needs to be done. “You never farm alone” means: look around you—you’re not alone!
So is that feeling deceptive?
Hurter Yes, in both directions. If you rely on the idea that “you never farm alone,” it’s deceptive, and if you feel completely alone, it’s also deceptive. Today, we are loners—we are antisocial individuals. That’s why we can no longer form communities like we used to. In the early years of an initiative, it may be possible to feel romantically connected as a community, but then it becomes a daily chore to succeed as a community. That is the theme of our conference: we want to take into account today’s independent and lonely people.
Rincón “You never farm alone” is both an affirmation and a provocation. We can say it to the farmer who milks the cow at four in the morning and asks themself, “What am I doing here? No one helps me in the barn, no one sees me or my products!” It is also an invitation in the form of a question: “Are you really alone?” And you start to think: there is the immediate community on the farm, then there is the family, then the traders, scientists, all these groups that belong to the farm in a broader sense. In a spiritual sense, the deceased are also included. Can we contact them and ask them questions, like we do with our angels?
Hurter Organic farming is under enormous pressure. There are a lot of farmers who don’t know how they will pay their next bill or whether they will still have employees next year. We’ve found that farms that have successfully formed a community are better able to weather difficult times. Community building is becoming a matter of survival. However, there is a constant threat that a community will become apathetic or overheat with conflict. We lack guidelines for new communities. For example, after 30 years of working together, someone leaves the farm and demands payment for the work that is tied up as capital on the farm. This can ruin a farm!
Are these obstacles typical to community?
Hurter I believe that we are no longer instantly capable of community. We must relearn how to build community, including on our farms, which are naturally communal, inclusive places. Therefore, it would be wonderful if, as a result of this conference, community building became a subject in all biodynamic training programs.
Rincón Take the work of plant breeder Peter Kunz as an example: he worked alone in breeding for a period of time. But he needed to connect with farmers, for example, to propagate the seeds. This applies to everyone: you are alone and yet not alone. As individuals, we are the place where something can enter that moves things forward. Then we have to find ways to share that with a community. The community must succeed in sensing what lives in the individual.
Hurter That fits in with the saying that we repeat every week with our staff at the Goetheanum: “ A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.”
To what extent is agriculture a field of social experimentation?
Hurter Agriculture became a social laboratory in the wake of the 1968 movement. Many people came from the city to the countryside and created these social laboratories. I believe that in the future, every rural dweller will be a former city dweller.
Does city air make us free?
Hurter We cannot avoid this path of development. There’s a clash on the farm—the cows or seasons have no freedom. This opposition gave rise to the culture of the biodynamic movement—from land ownership to farming communities and community-supported agriculture (CSA). These are forms of community that integrate the freedom of the individual and the constraints of nature. Now it is a matter of making these forms of community available, of penetrating them such that they can be taught and learned.
Today, there is a lot of talk about co-creation, where strengths and forces are not just added together, as in collaboration, but multiplied.
Rincón Building communities of free individuals is a paradox, and there is probably no one, regardless of their path in life, who has not experienced the friction that arises here. In agriculture, we are surrounded by nature, where cooperation and co-creation happen everywhere. That is inspiring.
Hurter Co-creation is not just about how we humans work with and for each other—it also applies to nature. That is the meaning of biodynamics. Our attitude is that we not only protect nature, but—and this is what “dynamic” means—that we take nature with us on our path of development: “You never farm alone.”
Rincón That is biodynamic agriculture: we build with soil, plants, and animals; we build with the social community; and we build with the comprehensive, cosmic community to form a whole.
More Annual conference of the Section for Agriculture from February 4 to 7, 2026.
Translation Laura Liska
Image Ueli Hurter and Eduardo Rincón. Photo: W. Held
