Experiments in agroforestry
Everyone has a place of speech, an objective reality that shapes our personal experience and social interactions. In this section, I present my own place of speech within the agroecosystem I have cultivated for over five years, which can be considered an agroecological and agroforestry backyard. This is the result of my direct participation in organic farming and syntropic agriculture courses in northeastern São Paulo, alongside diverse rural communities. Firstly, I explain how agroforestry systems have become a central situated knowledge system in the repeasantization in this Brazilian region. Afterwards, I share my own experiences in ecological restoration and food sovereignty.
Syntropic agriculture emerges as a leading practice in São Paulo's countryside
Syntropic Agriculture is becoming the most prominent technique of agroecological farming in the northeast of São Paulo state and likely in other regions of Brazil. This approach restores local forests whilst producing food following ecological succession.
Under neoliberal policies and the internationalization of lands in the Global South, Brazil restructured its agricultural production based on comparative advantages. Lands were distributed according to commodity production needs: São Paulo state - once the world's largest coffee producer alongside Minas Gerais - became extensively occupied by sugar cane production.
The logic of the plantationocene was imposed on ancient worlds and rural peoples territories, and the latifundios organization spread the hyperseparation between Culture and Nature as an unique ontology. Thereby, the one-world world of capital imposes a monological approach on life, including methods of agriculture. In the São Paulo's countryside, a deep territorialization of entropy is witnessed.
Unlikely, family farming and the peasantry - including national rural movements such as MST and MPA, as well as traditional quilombola and indigenous communities - are preserving their ancestry through agricultures for life, with a strong emphasis on agroforestry. Much of the social fabric that shares these situated knowledge systems have been influenced by syntropic principles.
Syntropic Agriculture was founded by Ernst Götsch, a Swiss farmer based in Brazil. He united a great diversity of agri-cultures into what can be considered a transmodern agricultural technique. After years of learning from rural communities in Costa Rica about their forest handling principles, Ernst developed his own agroforestry approach.
Mimicking natural ecosystem metabolism, this technique merges and organizes a wide diversity of plant species in time and space. As they grow, these species provide food and fiber whilst creating chemical reactions and organic matter that gradually improve the health of the entire system and its symbiosis.
Tree pruning is a fundamental practice to level up agro-ecosystems to higher productivist stages. A syntropic system grows in complexity, offering products while restoring tropical ecosystems. Syntropic Agriculture mimics nature's processes at an accelerated pace through constant handling. Through pruning, solar light can access new growing plants and seeds on the ground, the soil is enriched by organic matters accumulation, and secondary trees thrive in the dossel's opened spaces
By this complex agricultural technique traditional rural communities are expand the agroecological movement. Planting productive forests requires deep knowledge on local ecossystems protagonizing indigenous and other traditional communities wisdom. Situated knowledge systems play a central role in syntropic agriculture by seeking ancestral answers to advance agriculture in São Paulo and Brazil.
Syntropic Agriculture aims to create more complex ecosystems. Beyond production - understood as results at different stages of ecological succession - agroforests socially represent deep knowledge systems. Syntropic Agriculture has developed as situated knowledge systems built on the experiments of peasant and family farmers, guided by the ancestral wisdom and worldviews of rural peoples.
Pruning mature or senescent individuals is essential for agrecosystem renewal. The system responds by promoting growth across different successional stages, protecting and fertilizing the soil through organic matter deposits, and increasing light availability for lower strata. This practice also extends the life of pioneer species, which contribute valuable growth dynamics to the agroecosystem.
Selective weeding is essential for a healthy agroecosystem. Whilst the controlled introduction of exotic species is encouraged, growing native and endemic plants creates ecological balance that prevents pests and fungal infections from spreading. Organizing organic matter is equally important for sustaining crops over time.
References
Götsch, E. (1996). O renascer da agricultura. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: ASPT.
Rebello, J. F. & Sakamoto, D. G. (2022). Agricultura sintrópica segundo Ernst Götsch. Alto Paraiso de Goiás, GO: Edições Aguará.
Rural communities and the rise of syntropy
Agroforestry has become a prominet agricultural practice for a considerable sector of Brazilian peasantry today, yet many argue that planting forests has always been the agricultural practice of diverse rural peoples worldwide, mainly by the indigenous people. In Brazil - a vast territory of tropical forests - forest populations have developed cosmologies that reject modernity's separation between Culture and Nature. It is precisely these Natures-Cultures that embody the DNA of Sytropy, a rationality currently rising in São Paulo's countryside, as they seek cultural meaning within ecological complexity..
Cooperafloresta can be considered the first popular large-scale experiment - in number of family units - to adopt syntropic agroforestry as a community agricultural practice. This cooperative brings together 75 families in the Ribeira Valley, across the municipalities of Barra do Turvo in São Paulo and Adrianópolis and Bocaiúva do Sul in Paraná. Many of these families are quilombola descendants who have practiced coivara farming for centuries in the Atlantic Forest. Starting in the 1990s, the shift from partial burning to pruning - with support from Ernst Götsch - made possible the soil health recovery, the preservation of primary forests, and increased food production.
Building on this experience, the Barra Sustainable Development Project, popularized syntropic agroforestry in the Ribeirão Preto region. As I show in my master's thesis, the Agroflorestar Project enabled syntropic ontology to directly confront entropy. Rural social movements, particularly the MST, had already embraced agroforestry due its inate agroecological principles of food production and restoring ecosystems. Today, several syntropic experiments exist in Brazil, but Cooperafloresta and the Barra Sustainable Development Project are recognized as avantgard experiences and those which maintaining direct ties to Ernst Götsch's original work.
Landscape reading: 1) lemon-bravo; 2) a growing citrus plant; 3) jaqueira; 4) okra tuber; 5) araticum plant; 6) guava tree trunk; 7) another growing citrus
Syntropic Agriculture has flourished in popular territories, from quilombola descendants to landless rural settlements. Although founded by Swiss agronomist Ernst Götsch, this practice enables a remarkable meeting of many other worlds. It aims guaratee food scurity with clean food whilst provinding tools to rethinking how historically oppressed peoples can build sovereignty against the hegemonic agrarian structure. Our observations begin in the northeast region of São Paulo State, and from this place of speech, we have witenessed the rise of situated knowledge system that can elevate Agroecology to new social levels drawing from quilombola perspectives, the struggle for popular agrarian reform, and the repeasantization rooted in caipira culture.
Nature-culture at Quilombo Terra Seca, on the banks of Turvo River, in the Ribeira Valley, Brazil
For Cooperafloresta families, agroforests represent a reconnection with ancestral practices. For the Landless, they offer a rooted belonging which addresses social exclusion and environmental degradation in the occupied areas. The transformation of devastated landholdings into rural settlements where families can build food security with organic food and protect essential ecosystems, Agroecology reaches new social dimensions and significance.
The agroecological experience of the Barra Sustainable Development Project is described elsewhere in this site and in detail in my master's and doctoral theses. Its relationship with Cooperafloresta stands out, mainly through the Agroflorestar Project that transformed the old latifundio of Barra Farm into a popular rural settlement with syntropy as its ontological foundation. From peasant to peasant: these grassroots pedagogical processes are fundamental for advancing syntropic complexity.
Agroecology is rooted in extensive learning processes. Through daily experimentation and work, rural communities learn to cultivate their agro-ecosystems. Definitely, agroecosystems emerge through dialogue with non-human bodies. This is how Natures-Cultures are formed: with a profound sense of belonging to the occupied space, embodying the syntropic perspective when seeking for higher levels of ecological complexity. In this sense, knowing also means affirming the voice of people who interact with non-human bodies such as trees, rivers, mountains, forests, and soils, all equally situated in living spaces.
References
Neto, N. E. C.; Messerschmidt , N. M.; Steenbock, W.; Monnerat, P. F. (2016). Agroflorestando o mundo de facão a trator. Barra do Turvo: Cooperafloresta.
My agroforestry yard
My agroforestry yard actual succession stage
This is my place of speech: a region immersed in profound process of repeasantization inspired by Syntropic ontology in constant development. Through the deep territorialization of entropic capitalism, this region lost its ancestry to a monological standardization that insists on separating Culture from Nature.
In this context, I decided to recover 2,500 square meters of land located in the transition zone between Cerrado and Atlantic Forest. The project is an experiment in family-scale organic food production and over the last five years, I established four modules of 200 to 300 square meters each. Each module is now at a different stage of ecological succession. The next photos were taken between 2020 and 2021 and show the first module.
Forest's placenta
Florest's placenta is a concept in Syntropic Agriculture that refers to short-cycle species. These plants act as colonizers and pioneers in the agroforest, mobilizing avaiable nutrients in the soil and creating new physical and chemical relationships. They fulfill the initial stage of a forest in its germinal phase, when the trees are still seeds that need care and a conducive environment to grow.
The four modules cultivated in my plot began with placenta's species. First, I removed the brachiaria, opened beds, and incorporated a substantial amount of organic matter for planting grains and vegetables. The gardens nurtured the seedlings which have reached a productive fruit forest already. In the first module, I introduced lines of mombaça grass due its wider space.
Food Sovereignty
Each agroforestry growing stage is also a harvesting moment. During the first three years, I harvested grain plantations and vegetable gardens. This was possible because the forest canopy had not yet formed, allowing sunlight to enter the system. I planted a great variety of seeds, many rooted in the local caipira food culture. From rustic to more demanding species, I harvested corn, cassava, beans, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, okra, tomatoes, leafy greens, and others.
Native and traditional seeds
The most meaningful moment of planting is harvesting seeds from the cultivated agroecosystem. This marks the end of the productive cycle and opens the possibility for genetic multiplication of species. Some traditional seeds that are grown here came from the Indigenous Reserve of Dourados. Varieties of pumpkins, watermelons, and sunflowers were sent to me from the Namaste Messerschmidt farm. Many trees I planted grew from native seeds collected in nearby Legal Reserve areas as a way to reproduce the local ecosystem matrix.
My collection of native and traditional seeds
Biocultural memory
I thoroughly selected the trees before planting the agroforestry modules. The orchard includes traditional fruits: avocados, plums, blackberries, bananas, citrus, persimmons, jaboticabas, mangoes, papayas, and peaches. However, my main goal was to recover the biocultural memory lost through food and landscape standardization. Today, I harvest native fruits like bacupari, maranhão chestnut, esfregadinha, ingá, marolo, murici, pitanga, saguaraji, and uvaia. Meanwhile, I wait for baru, gabiroba, graviola, grumixama, and sapucaia to mature among many others.
In addition to the fruits, the trees themselves offer ways to recover the deep ecological memory lost over the years. By naming them, other epistemologies emerge alongside endemic languages and phonetics: araçá, beribá, cambuci, capixingui, capororoca, chalchal, chichá, cordia, cupuaçu, embaúba, fendegoso, jaracatiá, jatobá, juçara, maçaranduba, mapati, mulungu, mutamba, jenipapo, peloteira, saguaraji, sassafráz, tarumã, taiuva among others as angicos, aroeiras, canafístula, cedro, farinha-seca, guapuruvu, ipês, jacarandá, pau-mulato, sibipiruna, triplaris. Cultivating syntropic agroforestry is also memorizing the leading role of common ancestry.