Articles

The story I’m going to tell you today begins 800,000 years ago. There does not appear to be a break in the lineages of humans and our ancestors Neanderthal and Homo Heidelbergensis using fire and hand tools to create forest clearings to select for and plant special species of trees, shrubs and herbs which have been important foods, medicines, and materials to countless groups of people. These forest gardening practices are our collective heritage and are a defining feature of our identity as a species. These practices span more than half a dozen entire cycles of ice age. We call our ancestors and many of our living relatives “Indigenous” to distinguish them from those of us who have recently lost these practices.
 

We see these practices dwindling around the world as we continue the deforestation of the planet, a practice which has gone hand-in-hand with the genocides of our Indigenous ancestors and which continues part and parcel with the genocides of our Indigenous relatives in parts far and wide. When we began losing our ancestral forest gardening heritage we originally replaced it with biodiverse polycultures which emphasized grains and legumes such as the maslins (or “mashlum” in Scots). We now monocrop immense swaths of land with these grasses and forbs. Our small gardens are where we preserve the remaining faint reflections of our once-advanced ancestral forest gardening techniques. Many of us have forgotten to include the trees and shrubs in our gardening and farming systems and ecosystems around the world are suffering because of this. 

Our ancestral forest gardening practices are not lost, however. They are still practiced in many surviving traditions, such as the dehesas of Spain and other Mediterranean forest gardening and silvopasture practices; in the ancient form of milpa still practiced in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico (likely the most advance system of regenerative agriculture in the world); in the ahupuas of Hawaii; in the terraced polycultures of Haiti, which include trees and shrubs; and in the Indigenous agroforestry of the Amazon and Atlantic forests of Brazil. It is from these ancient agroforestry practices that modern syntropic agroforestry was born. 

Syntropic agriculture is the restoration and preservation of our ancient ancestral heritage, the resuscitation of our local ecosystems and economies, the realization of food sovereignty and nutrient density, the cultivation of communal self-sufficiency, and the healing of our minds and hearts through ceasing to fight Nature and returning to nurturing roles in ecosystems. It is returning to our natural roles as a steward species. It is for these reasons that I feel humbled and fulfilled to teach this practice to the many human clans in parts of the world where we’ve lost much of our ancestral connection. 

Syntropic agroforestry is a modern form of forest gardening, a powerful form of regenerative agriculture which combines modern ecology and botany knowledge with ancestral agroforestry wisdom to build and maintain fertile, resilient ecosystems. From this practice we receive our food, medicine, fibers, dyes, wood, and everything else we need from our living environment. It is a biodiverse polyculture system incorporating trees, shrubs, grasses, forbs, and nitrogen-fixing plants. We focus on accumulating organic matter in the system quickly to accelerate the rates of increase of biomass and nutrient cycling: the productivity and fertility of the system. This is accomplished through filling all canopy levels from forest floor to the tallest trees and by planting in waves of succession, so no space is without photosynthesis and unique foods. A large fraction of the plant matter created is left right there to contribute to the system, so the system builds more and more plant matter and complexity. Pruning mimics regenerative grazing and other disturbances, stimulating an increase in the amount of organic matter that plant roots release into the soil food web, building soil faster. Our constant awareness of the metaorganism allows us to maximize our benefit to the system. The Indigenous peoples of Brazil never forgot what Suzanne Simard just reminded us about the communication and resource sharing that happens between all organisms in the forest through the complex mutualisms occurring inside the living soil.
 

Rather than maximizing extraction, we share with the living system and increase productivity dramatically. We end up receiving more for ourselves than we would otherwise, and more nutrient-dense foods and medicines at that. We also begin healing our relationships with the living world around us. Rare birds and mushrooms return. Snakes and turtles and toads, wildcats, native pollinators, and every color of beetle grace these forest gardens and honor us with their presence, their dances, their ceremonies, their songs. Long absent native plant species begin returning on their own because our actions have invited them back. They come to support syntropic systems around the edges and to take leadership roles within; and ecosystems benefit when we allow them to return to their natural roles. 

When we’re ready to return to our ancestral forest gardening heritage, we have only to begin. We enjoy developing more relationships in the living communities we’re a part of. The forests we cultivate welcome us home, and we’re nourished in this family, growing and co-creating with many beings, a part of the forest.

Written by Coakí 

Published April 2023

Upper Gila Watershed Alliance