Principles of Syntropic Agriculture according to Ernst Götsch José Fernando dos Santos Rebello 2018 1 Photo Felipe Pasini Cover photo - Castanheira, Bertholletia excelsa, 16 years old planted by Ernst on his farm in Bahia, thanks to the syntropic handling, the diameter at height of the chest should not be anything to a eucalyptus of the same age. A chestnut tree can grow as much as a eucalyptus, after the initial phase of rapid growth of this, with the advantage of producing a wood of excellent quality and fruits of high biological value. 2 Preface So I heard ... I met Ernst Götsch in 1994, when I was still a student of agronomy, and his lecture at the University was so shocking to me that shortly afterwards I and a few other friends were on his farm, great transformation that he had been carrying out in those lands. His knowledge of how nature works is so profound that even today, whenever the meeting has the feeling of being still in the first class. This book was written by people in love with nature, in love with Planet Earth and who believe that it pays to do the best to take care of it, even if they do not see the result. It is entirely based on the teachings of Ernst Götsch. The urgent need to publicize a production system that produces tons of healthy and tasty food, recovers degraded areas, returns water to lost springs, and brings back our forests, has pushed us into this endeavor. It is far from being a definitive guide on synthetic agriculture, since the knowledge about this agriculture is as dynamic as the agroforests built by Ernst Götsch. We also do not want the paper to freeze the concepts, because each day its creator perfects the methods and the interpretation of how nature works. Knowledge, just as life carries this impermanence, we have to be open-minded and unarmed to understand that life is not static, it is dynamic and impermanent. We also have no commercial objective, so we are making the book available on the international computer network - internet. Thus it is also easy to correct the errors, for true listening implies a great concentration, which we confess, we can not always achieve. If we succeed, we have no doubt, the laurels fit our Master, if we fail to interpret the concepts ... that's how we heard. If mankind can create truly sustainable food production systems, overcoming the obstacles it has created, I have no doubt that this path will at some point find the syntropical agriculture created by Ernst Götsch. All images, graphs and drawings are copies of the original drawings proposed by Ernst Götsch in many classes attended in the last 23 years, and are always changing, in a constant improvement of the art of harvesting the Sun. 3 Acknowledgments To Ernst Götsch, for being present at the time of my existence, Cimara, Renate, my brother Antonio, my family, Dani, Cora, Zé Pedro and Bernardo, Agenda Gotsch, Namaste, Henrique, Fabiana Peneireiro, Ursula, Juã, Romulo, Patricia Vaz, Karen Ranzi, Rodrigo and Denise, Gudrum, Craig and Neil, Marcio Armando, Sofia, Augusto Carvalho, Thiago, students of the long term course of the Gotsch Agenda and all agroforestry of all "ethnicities" of the planet, my eternal gratitude. A very special and profound thanks to Pedro Paulo Diniz for his pioneering large-scale synoptic agriculture, and Felipe, Dayana and Edmara Barbosa, who succeeded in their incredible ability and mastery of the magic of cinema, to spread the synoptic agriculture in the "novel of nine" and to the four winds, my eternal gratitude. The time for action has come. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 2 Acknowledgments 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 WHAT IS SYNTROPY 5 PRINCIPLES 6 Principle 1 - Maximize photosynthesis 7 Principle 2 - Natural succession and stratification 15 Principle 3 - Covered Soil and Dense Tillage 34 Principle 4 - Selective weeding and pruning (always remove plants from the previous succession). 41 Principle 5 - Concentrate energy, generate biomass efficiently. 43 Principle 6 - Ecophysiology of plants and ecophysiological function of plants. 44 Principle 7 - Synchronize plantings. Edges should be pruned. 45 Principle 8 - What every being is doing well. 47 CONCLUSION 48 APPENDIX I INDICATOR SPECIES 49 APPENDIX II ERNST GÖTSCH 51 5 WHAT IS SYNTROPY The great contribution that Ernst Götsch gives us is to have unveiled and systematized the principles through which nature works , Ernst gives us an ecological literacy - as Fritjof Capra says, understanding the principles of organization that ecosystems have developed to sustain life - the path to sustainability. The syntropy, unlike the entropy, goes from the simple to the complex. Tables 1 and 2 taken from Fritjof Capra's book, The Web of Life, give us an accurate idea of ​​the capacity of life on the planet to maintain the stability of this macro-organism known as Earth, performing its functions properly for its own equilibrium , a function known in animal physiology as homeostasis. Thanks to the emergence of life 3.5 billion years ago and through syntropy, life has been compounding the energy coming from the Sun into the most different life forms, transforming and storing it, thus forming a complex living network. For thousands of years human beings have been causing disturbances in many places of the planet, where we have not reached the acceptable limits of disturbance, this network has reestablished its connections, life has returned to flourish, like the regeneration of a small cut in our skin, but where we have surpassed this capacity for regeneration, it is as if we had amputated a leg, an arm, nature itself did not succeed in this time scale to return to the previous stability, thus disappeared whole civilizations and enormous deserts appeared. Thus, understanding that life on the planet is governed by the syntropic principles, by using them we can return life to degraded areas and turn deserts into forests again. The principles proposed by Ernst Götsch are put here in a sequence only to facilitate reading, but they are not in a hierarchy of importance, all are fundamental and must always occur at the same time, for the success of agroforests. The best description would be that of a network, all are interconnected. When we implant an agroforest, the absence of any principle weakens this network, it would be like a hole, where energy can escape that complicates life, so the energy that could be stored in our system is lost, and this is reflected in the quality of our agroforestry, the emergence of short-cycle herbs, "invasive plants" (from previous succession systems), absence of strata, aged plants, diseases, insect outbreaks, low production, are only the symptoms of not completely applying all the principles. So often to understand one principle we refer to another because they are all interconnected, almost merged into an amalgam. 6 PRINCIPLES Principle 1 - Maximize photosynthesis The more photosynthesis, the more vigorous the system. Photosynthesis happens not only with water coming from the soil, plants drink water from the atmosphere as well. The maximization of photosynthesis by planting in high density and strata allows the system to become dark and colder. If we really understand photosynthesis to the depth it requires, we will be able to build the most beautiful and productive agroforestry. Have long known equation of photosynthesis: water + CO2 LIGHT Glucose + O2 Glucose synthesized during photosynthesis is the precursor of the characteristic carbohydrate of plants: sucrose, starch and cellulose, which can notsynthesized by animals with cellulose the most abundant polysaccharide in nature. Huge amounts of pulp are produced annually by the plant kingdom, not only in growing forests, but also by crops intended for harvesting. It is estimated that every day vegetables synthesize 50 kg of cellulose for each human being on the planet (Lehninger, 1989), which in today's calculations would give 350 billion kg of cellulose produced per day. From the glucose produced in photosynthesis, the plants form numerous other sugars such as maltose, sucrose, fructose, mannose, ribose, arabinose, xylose and others. Carbohydrates are the "sustenance of life" for many organisms, and account for most of the caloric intake of humans, most animals, and also, directly or indirectly, of most microorganisms. Carbohydrates also occupy a central position in the metabolism of green plants and other photosynthetic organisms. The vast amounts of starch and other carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis are the ultimate source of energy for animals, plants and microbes. Thus we understand the fundamental importance of photosynthesis as the primary source of food for most living beings on this planet and mainly the basis of the fertility of our soils, because by feeding the community of soil microorganisms with carbon from photosynthesis, we will be creating a virtuous circle, where more fertility produces more biomass, more leaves, more chlorophyll, more photosynthesis, more soil food, but life in the soil, higher fertility, greater balance of biocenosis, more plant health. Looking at this virtuous circle, we understand the importance of planting in strata, taking full advantage of all the luminous energy of the Sun, making each stratum always have the maximum of young biomass. And when we connect this with the natural succession of the plants, accelerated by means of the 7 7 prunings, we reach the apex of this technology, the natural technology created by the planet itself, the maximization of photosynthesis. We are, for example, seeking to maximize photosynthesis in a conventional corn plantation (zea mays) as in image 1. Image 1 - Conventional maize planting. Source: http://www.folhadooeste.com.br/cidades/, 04/11/2015. Today the number of maize plants per hectare can reach 90,000 plants / ha, we try to occupy every square centimeter of the plantation with green leaves to capture the sunlight, reflecting a higher production of grains.