Industrial farming feeds billions of people but depletes nature and contributes to climate change. It requires heavy use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
Syntropic farming, in contrast, is a nature-friendly method that restores soils and increases biodiversity. It can also be more profitable than industrial agriculture because it produces food with high yields with fewer costly inputs.
Syntropic farming reestablishes methods indigenous people used to grow food for millennia before industrial farming.
In this Episode 7 of Climate Levers, two advocates of syntropic farming—Uzzy Arztmann and Christian Fu Müller—talk with host Eduardo Esparza about their experience promoting syntropic farming in Brazil and elsewhere. This is the first of a two-part series on their work in syntropic farming and agroforestry.
What’s so different about syntropic farming? Here’s how Uzzy describes a syntropic farm field she knows well:
You have rows of trees bordering an area where you might have vegetables, grains, soybeans, cotton, or other crops.
It's a pleasure to work in these systems. When you walk in the field, you hear the buzz of insects. You hear birds singing. It's a place where life thrives. You sense animal movement everywhere. The soil is packed with organisms that break down the mulch.
You're not just driving tractors to plant seeds and harvest. You become a vivid observer of what's happening in these systems. The fields are wonderful to work in—especially in hot climates—because the trees provide shade.
You need your intellect. You need your senses. It's not just a mind-driven agriculture. It's also a heart-driven agriculture where we humans can be fully engaged.
Mentioned in this episode:
● Life in Syntropy: https://youtu.be/gSPNRu4ZPvE
● Ernst Götsch: https://agendagotsch.com/en/
● Soulfood Forestfarms: https://soulfoodforestfarms.org/
● Recelio: https://recelio.org/
● Ursula "Uzzy" Arztmann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursula-arztmann/
● Christian Fu Müller: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianfumueller/
Ursula “Uzzy” Arztmann is founder and president of Recilio, an organization that promotes regenerative agriculture around the world. Christian Fu Müller is vice president of Recilio.
The two had been separately interested in how agriculture could produce food more naturally. They independently explored natural farming and permaculture but both were dissatisfied with those approaches because they don’t involve systems thinking.
Then Ernst Götsch, a Swiss researcher and farmer who worked in Brazil, published a document called Life in Syntropy. The document, published in 2015, described how the author had restored degraded farmland in Brazil and made it highly productive. Götsch did so by applying ancient natural practices known to indigenous people but mostly lost to industrial farming.
Uzzy and Fu met each other at a workshop Götsch offered in Spain in 2016. Impressed by Götsch’s methods, both went to Brazil for two years to learn from experienced syntropic farmers.
They co-founded a not-for-profit association called Soulfood Forest Farms in 2018. They also created a living laboratory that established a regenerative agroforestry system on about eight hectares of land near Milan, Italy.
Soulfood Forest Farms later became Recilio.
