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Centropic farming,

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it's a way of farming,

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but

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I think the major difference in between other farming approach,

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it's we try to simulate what the forest ecosystem does and replicate it in a food production mode.

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So we try to,

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as best as we can,

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to add the concept of succession and also the layer concept.

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on the food production,

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using mainly,

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because we are a natural park,

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mainly native species.

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Hi everyone and welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast.

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Earlier this year in

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May, I had the pleasure to visit a very special place called

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Terra Centropica,

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located in the south of Portugal.

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My guest for this episode is Antonio Coelho.

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I'm not 100%

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sure I'm pronouncing this right,

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but I hope I am.

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And he has been practicing syntropic agroforestry here for a number of years,

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and the numbers are just astonishing.

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In one of the harshest and driest places in the whole of Europe,

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with some of the most degraded soils,

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he's built over 60 centimeters of soil and brought the organic matter levels of that soil up to

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7.4%.

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in only six years.

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And that's not all.

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They've achieved that while reducing their input needs drastically.

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For example,

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reducing irrigation by 85%.

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I don't even have the words to describe how incredible those numbers are.

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They go way beyond what experts and scientists thought was even possible.

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This is literally pushing the boundaries of what a food production agricultural system is actually capable of.

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And

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This is possibly the most hopeful piece of information that I've heard all year long,

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because it tells me that when the current globalized,

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linear and super extractive food system eventually falls apart,

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well,

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we have these incredible solutions to fall back onto when we have the capacity to rebuild our food system very fast,

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based on the principles of syntropic farming,

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of regenerative agriculture and agroecology.

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This episode was originally created in a video format for YouTube and it's actually my most popular episode yet with more than 30

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000 views on YouTube.

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I definitely recommend heading there to watch the full episode otherwise if that's not available to you right now stay here and I've selected a few key passages that are really well adapted and really easy to follow in audio format right here on your favorite streaming platform.

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This episode was made in partnership with soil capital

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I'm your host Raphael and this is the Deep Seat Podcast.

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So why choose to go in that direction of complexifying systems,

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of going for this syntropic kind of system rather than doing what most people do which is simplified monoculture efficient systems?

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When I first started in 2008 on this farm,

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we used to grow herbs mainly for exporting for northern countries of Europe.

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And this model was completely based on,

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although I was organic,

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in a more conventional organic mode,

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which it states we were based on a black plastic cover on the soil and we used to plant all these herbs.

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on top of these plastic beds or raised beds as we call them and I was organic so what I felt at the time it first of all it was wrong because when

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you have temperatures on summertime that reach easily 40 or 45 it means that if you are using a synthetic mulch cover

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you are killing all the life on the soil.

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And I start completely,

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almost straight away,

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feeling this pressure of not treating the soil well.

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So a lot of death rates,

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a lot of problems on the plants,

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plagues,

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diseases,

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and so on and so on.

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And the demanding on water irrigation.

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was huge.

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So the pressure of irrigation all the time,

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it was constantly there.

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And with this system it's completely different.

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You work...

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with life.

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You work with the soil.

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You give your focus.

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It's not the production.

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Well,

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obviously,

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in the end of the day,

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you need to produce.

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But your main focus is the soil.

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When you treat the soil well,

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with a lot of organic matter,

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a lot of mounching material,

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chop and drop,

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all this that we chop and drop stays on the top of the soil surface.

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And you start decreasing your irrigation.

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needs completely it's completely i can tell you that i used to irrigate twice a day before nowadays even on the summertime i irrigate much less we do irrigate more or less twice a week so

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it's a huge difference in terms of quantity of water needed for uh fulfill the needs of the plants yeah yeah okay it's it's completely different so this is why

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The principal reason that we do this type of farming here,

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it's because also the difficulties of the landscape.

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Mertula is well known for very tough summers,

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very concentrated rainfall during certain periods.

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And I can tell you that I already experienced at least four droughts in Mertula,

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tough droughts.

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The period without any rain,

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it can be eight months.

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And still,

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I will manage to produce without irrigating that much because we look at the soil and we keep them as covered as possible.

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And that's why

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I think,

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answering your question,

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it's one of the main reasons why we do it in this way and not another way.

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If I understand correctly,

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in a sort of conventional system,

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It's a very linear system where we bring in energy from outside in the form of water,

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of nutrients,

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of compost,

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of fertilizer,

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everything.

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So all of that is energy basically that we bring into the system.

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And then we harvest it out and we take it out of the system.

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It's very linear.

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And what you're trying to do is to keep…

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It's the opposite.

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It's to circulate or try to recycle your energy as much as possible without bringing in…

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a lot of energy okay so to really try to be as circular as possible with energy and nutrients and everything that's on the market so normally what happens in a in conventional and other types of farming there is a lot of energy coming manure plants

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seeds and everything so we try as best as possible to do it insight obviously when you are in this stage of the gradation you need to

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on the beginning to bring inputs but afterwards your system starts to balance in a way that you don't need those inputs that much you probably need some from time to time but not as much because you because all

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the materials that we cut down stays on the soil so you decrease completely the needs of bringing inputs because of this the life on the soil

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They recycle everything that you put on top of it.

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So they decompose and mainly they transform all this carbon into food.

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Yeah.

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Since we're on the topic of energy,

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a big source of energy is the sun,

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right?

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I suppose that it's also something you're trying to do with this kind of system,

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with different layers,

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is to maximize photosynthesis.

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It's to maximize the system's ability to capture sun energy and to feed it to the system,

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right?

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Yes,

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so that's what the different layers do.

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So the way that we mount everything,

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it's in order to capture the sunlight as much as possible.

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And with that,

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because photosynthesis is energy,

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it's energy disposed to all your ecosystem.

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So everything benefits.

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The biomasters,

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they...

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are here for be pruned.

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So they enter on this loop of pruning constantly.

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We mainly prune these biomass trees around three to four times per year.

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And you see this loop of growth.

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When they grow,

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when they shoot back,

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they consume energy and release energy through the others,

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through the pruning.

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So it means that as they are pruned,

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they decompose

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sugars on the soil and mainly feed the life on the soil.

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Okay.

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Okay,

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yeah,

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I understand.

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With that,

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we have more energy being decomposed and released by the sugars and by the micro-life of the soil,

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and it's mainly our food for our system.

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Okay.

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So your trees are growing.

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The bigger they're growing,

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the more foliage they have,

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the more biomass you produce,

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the more photosynthesis is happening.

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Some of that carbon captured by the plant is released into the soil,

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through the roots,

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to the microbiome.

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So it's already feeding the system.

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And some of it will be used to grow the tree,

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the branches,

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the leaves,

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the fruits,

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everything.

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And so when you're pruning and you're cutting those branches and leaves and then putting them on the ground,

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that's...

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all of that energy,

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that carbon that is stored there,

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that decomposes,

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feeds the microbiome,

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and is fed into the system as well.

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Yes,

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and also the pruning also allows you to keep the plants on the right strata all the time,

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because you don't want them to start covering the light that others need,

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so you need to prune them.

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So you need to conform them in a way that everything is more or less...

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with their needs fulfilled.

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Okay.

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Just a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seed podcast,

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Soil Capital.

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and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.

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Something I find really interesting is that the what most

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people think and me myself included until recently is that if you have a lot of density of planting of different trees of shrubs of you will have competition between those plants for the resources for the water for the nutrients but

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in in this case you're kind of proving that it's the opposite i think we are teached on this way about competition since we are

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As soon as we entered to the primary school,

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I don't see any competition.

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This is our mindset.

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Even if you consider the way that most of orchards are designed nowadays,

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they are completely dispersed apart,

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which in my view,

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it's not a very nice way to design them because they are more dependent.

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on inputs,

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inputs in all terms,

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nutrition and water inputs.

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Yeah.

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Yeah,

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if you combine all the right species in a succession mode and also in a strata layer position,

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well designed,

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you can see that as much as photosynths that they produce,

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the better for your system and better for you,

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better for your production.

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so for me having plants

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30 centimeters of sides from each other,

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it's not a competition.

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It's how nature works.

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And if you go into a more complex ecosystem,

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a more balanced ecosystem,

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you can see that happening in nature.

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One big question that a lot of people ask about this kind of systems is,

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can you make money with it?

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Can you be profitable?

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Because you see all of these super intensive monocrop...

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systems,

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using trees here in Portugal.

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We had a big conversation about that in a recent episode.

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And they're very profitable because they're super efficient.

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In comparison to that,

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we have the impression or the message that is out there is that with syntropic systems like this one,

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they are amazing in terms of being more circular,

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of being ecological,

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of being great for biodiversity,

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for water,

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for soil,

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for all of these ecosystemic benefits.

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But economically hard to make it work.

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Is that the case for you?

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We need to understand that this concept of economics is wrong.

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We just see the money side of it.

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We are not counting with the degradation that is implicit there,

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the water scarcity that is creating,

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the social problems that is creating.

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We removed all these variables from this equation.

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to consider that this model is more economical,

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viable than the others.

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Yeah.

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I think we need to be a little bit more realistic and enter different variables just in order to understand what is the most available ecosystem to work with.

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Okay.

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I would say,

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but this is a comparison obviously,

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and that this ecosystem is more productive in all ways than...

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others.

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So that was it for today's

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Rewind episode.

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Once again,

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if you found this interesting and you want to learn more,

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I definitely recommend heading to YouTube to watch the full video episode.

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It's also nice to watch it in video because then you can see Antonio and you can see his farm and farming system as well.

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If like me,

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you find...

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syntropic agroforestry fascinating and you would like me to do more episodes about it please let me know in the comments of this episode or on social media i always try to reply to every message and to every comment because this

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is really important for me i spend a lot of time alone at home editing these episodes and sometimes all i get back as a feedback is just a number on the screen how many people have listened to this episode

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and I miss and I lack sometimes the human connection.

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So don't hesitate to get in touch.

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Thank you so much for joining us today.

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I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day,

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of your week and a beautiful life.

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See you soon.