I'd also recommend Syntropic Agriculture, an agroforestry method pioneered by Ernst Gotsch. He personally reforested 500 hectares of degraded pastures and doesn't use any external resources such as pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, he employs methods like maximizing photosynthesis and selective pruning.
As a result, his land now stands as one of the most fertile and biodiverse regions within the Atlantic rainforest, achieving even higher yields than traditional farms. As syntropic farmers often say, they grow the soil to grow the food.
Another example would be the Natural Farming method pioneered by Masanobu Fukuoka. He also practices farming without the use of pesticides and herbicides, and his yields also surpass those of traditional farms.
I've been doing syntropic agriculture for over 7 years now. Ernst is no doubt a great teacher! But I would be careful with claiming it has better yields, it really depends on how you are measuring it, you might get better yields per plant, but not per square meter if counting only 1 crop, but since you have multiple crops in the same space (separated by time) the yields are better in general.
Its beautiful to see a coffee plantation where the trees got pruned right before the coffee flowers, that makes the best harvest per plant no doubt.
The best bigger scale syntropic system I know so far is Mata do Lobo https://instagram.com/matadolobo they are really mechanizing a lot of those processes are really digging into the soil ecosystem, its worth checking them out.
If the yield is better, why don't more do it? Is it just because it takes more skill, basically? In other words, what are the economic incentives working against adopting this farming method? I'm very interested because this type of farming sounds wonderful to me.
A lot of these methods aren't easy to scale (yet) and depend on the outstanding expertise of individuals. There are also various incentives and circumstances that work against it, depending on the country where you live:
- you can't get loans from the bank because its not a proven method (applies to food forests or other types of agroforestry, not to organic farming anymore)
- you need some time investment to get the operation profitable, can be as much as ten years for a food forest
- regulations may prevent you from acquiring land, simply because the method isn't known
- you may not get subsidy and / or tax cuts because you have a different system or produce different crops
- the crops you produce may not always get the best prize on the market
- you simply aren't profiting from externalized costs, hence you are less competitive
An example of the last point: to support our meat and dairy industry, the Netherlands imports cheap soy from Brazil, which is produced by destroying millions of hectares of rainforest. This is a bit like fossil fuels (also used a lot in agriculture): it isn't sustainable and it is taking advantage of cheap labor and destroying natural resources elsewhere. If you want to produce meat or dairy in a sustainable way in the Netherlands without taking a toll on the Amazonian Rainforest, you will need a lot of land which is very expensive, and therefore you aren't competitive anymore.
The promises of syntropic farming are many: large yields; multiple income streams; optimal use of land; no need for external inputs; improved soil quality; minimal weeding; plant resilience due to biodiversity; and better water management, both in extreme wet and dry times. Gietzen tells the story of Götsch’s cacao farm, showing that an established syntropic system can sustain high productivity with a level of labor that is comparable to that needed to manage a conventional farm. However, syntropic farming can be complicated to understand and apply. It requires in-depth knowledge of biological processes, access to many different kinds of seeds, and careful management.
He refused to use artificial fertilizers and pesticides. He let most of the land grow naturally, and on 12 hectares (30 acres) he planted bananas and cocoa, cutting back the surrounding trees regularly. Today, he harvests an average 920 kgs (2,000 lb) of cocoa beans per hectare, more than three times the average across Brazil of 300 kg (660 lb) per hectare. And because he doesn’t spend money on fertilizers and pesticides, unlike the farmers around him, Götsch enjoys higher profits.
...
Then a drought hit the region. But not on Götsch’s farm. The dense vegetation of the 120 hectares locally created a lot of evaporation and the rain continued to fall. His success as a “rainmaker” finally earned Götsch the respect of his neighbors. They started to imitate him. Today, the forested area in the surroundings spans 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres). “When you fly over my finca now, you can’t see it anymore, because it is covered by clouds all year round,” Götsch says proudly.
It has nothing to do with attention or skill. Food forests are simply bad businesses. If they weren't, we would see adoption pretty quickly. Idealism only takes you so far, in the end people need to make a living.
Food forests also don’t do well producing the most highly subsidized crops (rice, cotton, feed corn & soy, etc).
I don’t know if they’d be viable vs non-subsidized farms either but in the US it is really hard to have a conversation about farm profitability without looking at how the government puts their finger on the scales.
US farm subsidies come in two forms: crop insurance (for the major crops you list) that ensure farmers can have some bad years/crop failures and not lose the farm; and CRP where the government "rents" marginal land so that farmers don't attempt to farm it (in drought years they will allow taking one crop of hay).
At one time there were a lot more subsidies, but not anymore.
There are all manner of “hidden” subsidies for commodity agriculture. The CFTC for instance runs out reach on agg derivatives even when they are low volume contracts (cheese).
Food forests are only bad business because bad business has made it so.
Where food forests win, is where people don't want mono-culture food products, and prefer to grow - and eat - locally.
Of course, if you've never stepped off the grid, you can't look at it, critically. If you have, you may wonder why you ever lived on it, in the first place.
We'd all be much, much healthier if we could eat locally, and grow our own foods - in whatever manner is feasible - instead of burning oil to do it.
I'm always surprised that people think farming isn't like any other industry in capitalism. They will aim to make as much profit with resources they have available.
If doing farming differently would certainly net more, they would do it. So I take there is some component that is forgotten. Be it scaling, labour input or available market for higher priced products.
In a lot of countries people still think farmers are stupid. Because of that a lot people think that even amateurs can do a better job, as long as they are not a traditional farmer.
They said nothing of the sort. People in here are passing this method of farming off as a settled fact that it is better, when even Gotsch says it is still experimental and admits using fertilizer would boost yields of wheat, soy, and maize. Dropping yields of some of these key crops in the world's calorie consumption nearly 30% would be devastating to countries that depend on imports.
> I'm always surprised that people think farming isn't like any other industry in capitalism.
They probably don't see farming as being like capitalism because farming is, with some exceptions, mostly socialist in nature – the workers own the means of production.
> They will aim to make as much profit with resources they have available.
That is certainly true, although not a feature of capitalism. Wanting something in return for offering something to another transcends capital ownership structures.
Based on what I've seen in cities, something tells me that many of the neighbours will complain of pests and get regulators involved to prevent the food forest approach. I'd like to see otherwise though.
I'd also recommend Syntropic Agriculture, an agroforestry method pioneered by Ernst Gotsch. He personally reforested 500 hectares of degraded pastures and doesn't use any external resources such as pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, he employs methods like maximizing photosynthesis and selective pruning.
As a result, his land now stands as one of the most fertile and biodiverse regions within the Atlantic rainforest, achieving even higher yields than traditional farms. As syntropic farmers often say, they grow the soil to grow the food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ST9NyHf09M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE
https://agendagotsch.com/en/what-is-syntropic-farming/
Another example would be the Natural Farming method pioneered by Masanobu Fukuoka. He also practices farming without the use of pesticides and herbicides, and his yields also surpass those of traditional farms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzs8iFGNdBo