Ernst Götsch's Syntropic Agriculture
Translated from Portuguese. Original published by PRETATERRA.
Syntropic agriculture is a term used for regenerative farming that builds more complex systems. Syntropy is the opposite of entropy — in relation to particles (in entropy, particles tend from organized to disorganized, from contained to dispersed, in all physical aspects of matter).
In agroforestry, the term describes the creation of systems that become more complex and biodiverse over space and time — rather than any literal change in particles. The focus is biodiversity and low environmental impact.
In other words, the term does not define and/or consolidate specific practices of a given school, but rather, it encompasses a series of integrated and conservationist management practices — basically, using agroforestry principles of succession and stratification, empirical knowledge and, mainly, producing all the input (biomass) within the system itself (in its idealized form).
More holistic approaches and linking feelings and cosmic emanations to intrinsic connection between human beings and agriculture, have already been advocated by biodynamics, the first organic agriculture developed (1920s), which adopts ancestral principles of soil and species management, involving human beings organically in the process and addressing mystical and astrological concepts. However, biodynamic agriculture allows external inputs and does not necessarily involve trees in the production system. Thus, even though practically all biodynamic practices fit (or could fit) into the so-called syntropic agriculture, the principle of biomass production and emphasis on pruning, permeated by “unconditional love” and the perfection in composing the productive vertical strata, are points of divergence or, better said, complementary developments.
