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.
I know a few people that make very good money applying permaculture principles. Not because they are applying the principles, but because they are very good at selling their produce and services. They know how to get to their target audience, specially people with more money to spend. I think this is true for any kind of agriculture or business.
They are very similar actually, but permaculture is about more than just agriculture, agriculture is one of the sides of permaculture. For me syntropic agriculture is that side, some people also call it agroforestry but this term is used for other kinds of agriculture, which builds forests but differently. On syntropic the main difference is very high density of plants and extensively pruning. The video I posted in the first comment you see a few people doing research on automating this processes, there's also some people Swiss investing into this, sure with less biodiverse but its being working great for them, so yes, can be automated, also lots of machines used on fruits crops can be used on this system, specially to speed up pruning bigger trees. And usually on syntropic its not common to find "key" shapes beds and stuff that we see from permaculture, its usually straight rows, which helps a lot with automation I guess.
I don't know what to recommend you. I know a few people doing syntropic agriculture in Portugal which is as close as a close climate that I know. There is a guy in Florida, he have a company called GreenDreamsFL, hes the only one I know in the US doing this. But sadly this is not very much taught in academic courses down here in Brazil, but anything related to agroecology is very close, also understanding deeply plants biology helps A LOT when working with this systems, so we see a lot of people from Biology with a focus on Botany and Plant's physiology, and "florest engineering" I couldn't find a good translation to it, but its an academic course found here in Brazil which also helps a lot on understanding forests processes.
Just do it, start getting your hands dirty as other said.
I personally started with composting and now I have a system where my food waste becomes forests, I eat lots of vegetable/fruits and I just throw the bucket on a specific place, cover with mulch and food grows. Avocado, papayas, limes, cucumber, tomatos, lots of them grow easily here just by doing this.
If you look for "agroforest academy" in youtube you may find a video course in english on this syntropic agriculture topic too.
I had a small reserve, and I cut my living costs a lot. I wasn't trying to make money from agriculture in the beginning, was all about learning, I volunteered a lot and did a few courses later. This year we started actually selling produces and I get lots of calls to pruning jobs which I do decline because 2 years down this line I started working with development again because I got out of money. We would be able to live from the land today for sure, but also having economic security and being able to invest in better tools and such is also very good.
I'm now looking to merge this two worlds and work as a developer on solutions for agriculture/forests. I have a product in mind which I'm currently working on, lets see :)
Yes exactly! Its what happens naturally, trees dies, falls, takes others with them with the fall, make space for newer trees and wood decompose... Natural succession.
If you don't have woody material, just leafs works too, the key is organic matter build up and photosynthesis. So we tend to cut weeds (when they start to mature/flower usually) very cleanly for them to grow bigger and better, not killing them, focus is to build soil for more demanding plants.
Yes, the method applies anywhere in the planet. But for that you need to deeply understand the plants available for you, I mean those that are able to grow there in the beginning, native or not, here we use lots of african grasses and eucalyptus to start. There are a few people replicating this all over the world in very different environments.
Around 6 years ago I quit my job as a developer to dive into agriculture. I learned about syntropic agriculture systems and felt in love with it because:
- You are able to work with space and time in a way to maximize yield (not 1 crop yield, but but multi crop)
- It focus on being biodiverse
- It builds forests
So in this systems you will see rows of trees intercalated with rows of beans, corn, soy anything "weedy" or grasses... Harvest this small plants for many years, after a few years you harvest fruits, and after 2 decades you harvest the wood and start over. All with extensive pruning.
This way you end up with better soil each time without machines or fertilizers (sure you can speed even more the process with them), its a type of agriculture focused on nature's processes instead of inputs.
There's an interesting video about it showing some big farmers here trying to build machines better adapted to this kind of agriculture, this is the biggest bottleneck to scale because right now most machines are very focused on monocultures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE
I think for agriculture the way to go is syntropic agriculture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE I've seen people implementing this very successfully, I've been doing it myself for around 4 years now, and its very impressive how much carbon the soil stores after a few years on this practice.
Some trees takes years to fully decompose, even in contact with the soy, even on tropical climate. I say because I practice a kind of agriculture where we plant trees to feed to soil, we prune/cut the trees to cover the soil 4 times a year, the soil keeps increasing in organic matter (becoming darker and darker each year) and I notice some especies are very good at not decomposing, usually this are trees used for civil construction, which is another way of storing the CO2 I think. For me cutting trees down is not the problem, the real problem is not planting more... also where that energy of the tree ends up, burning wood I think is a waste.
If I walk on snow, do I experience walking, or do I just walk? What is experience?
If we explain experience in a way that its reactions happening in my body, maybe biochemical reactions, that could even translate into thoughts in my head, I could say that in a lower level the snow also experience reactions, physical reactions. A snowflake don't have a body to experience like we do, but it does experience something, because if not, it would not even deform.
For industrialized I mean canned, over packaged, processed and refined stuff, also produces from vary far away on our daily diet, not against it but we do over consume this stuff. (Obs: thats what I see around me)
But also, mono-crops are another issue which comes from industrialization too. I'm not against machines and robots, but we are still figuring out a way of working with this stuff together with forests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE
Here farms acreage is increasing, more mono-crops and less forests, all with the help of industrialization, crops from other side of the world and endemic fruits, nuts disappearing and because of that loosing habitats.
At least eucalyptus is winning, even though native wood is better in so many ways, but the iron industry here don't buy the charcoal if not from mono-crops of eucalyptus.