SYNTROPIC AGRICULTURE
RESEARCH CENTER SUPPORT:
AGENDA GÖTSCH Some of the key questions that we ask
when deciding to implement an agroforestry system are: 'What is the ideal spacing between the trees?' The proposal determine the correct design If I'm going to plant citrus or coffee
as the main production, what is the spacing? Here we made several spacings. For example, here we have three meters we started with vegetables Here you can see garlic chives,
it is still producing three meters wide Here we plant with the spacing of four meters also starting with vegetables After the vegetables, we tested green panic grass
and found that it did not go well as it did not grow very high
and the tropical spiderwort took its place. In the next rain, we will change to Mombasa. Four meters wide, rows of trees
one of our main plants is the citrus which is planted at a spacing of four
to five meters in the row. Here we plant at five meters,
we start with grains we plant hybrid corn AG-1051, which is corn for pamonha,
it is hybrid, it is not transgenic. Note that we don't start with vegetables. With five meters we start with grain because in the more distant trees it is possible
to make more grain time in that place. We planted grain once and then decided that
we are going to continue without grain. Five meters is too wide a spacing to remain treeless. Here we did it with six meters. So we have three, four, five, and six meters away. Here we also started with grain so we planted, here was a pasture for thirty,
forty, or fifty years in the past it was blocked since 2013, we started
planting wheat in the winter and then we started planting the rows of trees.
So notice it's six meters. If you decide to plant grain in rows of trees every year,
six meters is a fair space because the trees will take a long time
to shade in this area and by pruning the eucalyptus at four or five meters,
without letting the trees get any higher when the grain is planted,
we prune all the trees at four or five meters it makes a drastic pruning,
the wood gets thicker every year and in ten or fifteen years it is possible
to extract the wood from the tree line to sell it will be the first eucalyptus harvest, then at twenty or
thirty years it will be mahogany in forty years the pink trumpet tree, anyway it is possible to make this design Keeping six meters without planting grain I think it's a very big loss
of photosynthesis to keep it open so we import grass, we have a biomass bank which is
the pasture of these forty-six hectares we clear all areas, actually this grass
came from the firebreaks we make around the property. Firebreaks serve as protection against fires,
arson fires that burn millions of hectares are very common in the Brazilian Savannah so we cut ten, fifteen, even twenty meters wide,
the grass sprouts green and there is no problem of nearby
fires affecting us. All the grass from the boundaries
was brought here. We simply put the grass on top.
What happened? It's already dead. If we open up here, look, it's dead and
the ground is wonderful down here. The grass has died, it is very wet because the wheat irrigation
reaches here. So what will we do? When the rain comes,
let's plant again here we plant here Pelita Urograndis on both sides so there are mango trees,
Yellow Star Apple, jabuticaba, fruit trees so we have emergent strata with
medium strata, so let's plant coffee with high strata plants. We can also plant yellow mombin,
but we have to control the shade very well because if we have many emergent ones,
let's see what happens in the next place that we're going to see now. So the proposal determines the design. If I grow coffee, then I make a 3x1 spacing. Here's what happens: If you have a pasture
and decide to plant coffee, that pasture is fenced So if I decide to plant 3x1, that is, coffee meter by meter,
space of three meters then coffee meter by meter, so I can alternate
the strata that will shade the coffee plants I will plant high, medium and emergent trees here or here or I'll plant emergent strata plants with coffee here,
high strata with coffee here I can plant intermediate and upper with coffee there,
I skip the emergent, I can't plant emergent every three meters because that will leave many plants from the emergent
and there won't be sunlight for our coffee. This is critical. Back to the point,
if I plant coffee in a pasture, is the grass enough to divide? I have a pasture, a field, I have 1.5 meters of grass
to cover that coffee line and 1.5 meters of grass to cover this coffee line. This grass I fluff up here, I'm going to use
the machine from SR Implementos because it fluffs 40cm in width and subsoil, so I have 40cm of bare earth to cover
every three meters. If I take 1 and a half meters of grass here and 1 and a half meters of grass
here, is this 1.5 meters of grass enough
to prevent the grass and grass seeds that will awaken in these
forty centimeters from crossing? Look, this here was at this height,
almost 1 meter high. It has already decreased about 50%
in forty or fifty days it was here and it killed the grass, then great! We are going to open and plant the coffee,
the high strata, the emergent one in the middle. If we did this every three meters,
often the amount of grass is not enough so you have to import grass. Importing grass is expensive. That's what we did, but our idea is to have
enough biomass, this will last many months this amount of grass was very large,
almost one meter Ernst says 'At the height of the belly button’ which is the rule for having biomass enough. It cannot be convex, when we plant
it, we will open it with the garden forks fluff the earth and it will have this shape,
a concave shape in the middle and our seedlings will come out here,
coffee and trees in the future. It is essential to know the main fruit trees, for us to know the size of their
crowns when they are mature. It's okay to plant an avocado tree
with seeds every 10cm or 50cm because I'm going to thin. But if I plant my fundamental grafted trees,
which are expensive, for example, in my region a grafted lychee
costs thirty-five reais, I cannot plant a grafted lychee
every ten centimeters, but I can plant seeds. This will take ten or fifteen years,
but what's your rush? That's the question Ernst always asks: 'What's your rush?' So if I'm in a hurry, I'll plant grafted. If I can wait, I'll plant using seeds. So I'm going to put my plant in its definitive space. If I visit a lychee monoculture,
which is a medium strata plant If I place it as a monoculture,
I will only have lychee in the medium strata. In conventional agriculture, we seek to maximize
the photosynthesis of what we want of the plant that is the focus of our investment. But in agroforestry, in syntropic agriculture we have the evolution of natural succession
through strata. So it is not possible to have the only lychee
in the medium strata as a monoculture. Let's have the upper, emergent strata, the medium strata
in the stratification covers 60%, so if my main plant is lychee, it can only shade
60% of the medium strata when it's mature. If my focus is avocado, it can only cover
40% of the upper strata when it's mature. If I visit an avocado farm, I think: 'So a mature avocado tree is
eight meters in diameter.' But I can't have too many plants in the high strata,
otherwise what's going to happen? There won't be light reaching the medium and the low strata,
there won't be a stratified forest. If it is not stratified, the atmosphere will not cool
and there will not be a low-pressure zone attracting moisture. So we have to focus on the mature stage,
the percentage of strata of each layer, the percentage of shadow of each layer, regardless if my main plant is avocado. For example, if my main plant is pecan
and I'm in Rio Grande do Sul. I visited a pecan plant a few years ago and the spacing
was twelve meters by twelve meters. When the plant lost its leaves it was a huge void,
every twelve meters both this way and that way it was a pecan tree and underneath
the farmer used it as pasture. This is a pecan monoculture. It doesn't capture water,
it doesn't produce organic matter and when the mature trees were full of leaves,
there was a lot of shade. So they had a pop-up covering everything so in the main photosynthesis season,
which is spring and summer, which is when the pecan nut was full of leaves,
there was no light underneath. So I use the pecan nut as one of
the emergent ones and it can only shade if I only want pecan nut, it can
only shade twenty percent. But I can have a main plant underneath such as citrus in the medium strata or many southern trees such as
peach as medium strata, apple as upper strata, pear as emergent
along with pecan nut I can build as complex as I want if I respect the process,
when they reach the mature stage I can only have twenty percent of shadow
of emergent, forty percent shadow of high, sixty percent
shadow of medium and eighty to ninety percent shadow of low. In another region, when
the main plant is coffee, coffee as the main plant is low strata,
cocoa as the main plant is low strata too, so I may have eighty to ninety percent
dominating the lower strata. That's what Ernst does, plants cacao
every three meters in the low strata because above it is where we'll have the other strata,
that is, açai, cupuaçu, chestnut all the other trees from the other strata
of tropical climate. An important detail that I forgot to mention, folks,
when we don't have enough grass, because the ideal is this, but let's say I want it today,
I have plowed land and there is no grass, I want to implement so much grass
between the lines as in the the tree line Ernst's idea is, he even developed
a prototype together with ASR this prototype is under development, when we fluff
and subsoil the forty centimeters, this machine already pours the crotalaria,
zucchini and bean seeds These forty centimeters are fast-growing plants crotalaria grows fast, it shades
and prevents the growth of grass and we will brush the crotalaria when it grows,
at forty days, and put it in our coffee. So it's good for us to look for
fast-growing species, preferably legumes, when there is no grass to deposit,
so in those 40cm I planted seedlings, coffee seedlings, I planted trees with seeds,
and here on the side where there is bare land I plant a fast-growing, easy-to-handle plant
like crotalaria so I cut it and cover my coffee. Crotalaria grows fast and the shadow
decreases the awakening, the evolution of the herbs that were
already in that place so this is a strategy for us,
or if we have little grass we deposit it every 6 meters and
in this middle line we plant, in the 40 cm uncovered, fast-growing
annual plants that I will manage to produce biomass and thus cover the tree line. So we will see here in this system that
was planted almost four years ago, in 2017 four months from now it will be four years,
it was practically zero inputs but we planted many emergent ones, every three meters
approximately we planted rows of eucalyptus It has rows of 1.20m, 1.50m
and every three meters. What happened? Eucalyptus as an emergent
one took over that is, it is almost a
monoculture of eucalyptus, so the plants below did not develop well we pruned the side branches a few times,
the areas were small and here there was almost zero input,
in one hectare we used four cubic meters of manure from the corral and 800kg of limestone, so we see citrus with
zero fertilizer and we replaced the grass, it was signal grass, we planted four types of grass to see
which would settle better and we saw that the andropogo settled here, brushing every year and depositing it
underneath a four year old citrus, because of the excess shadow of the emergent ones. It is essential that in this process
of planting with seeds in high density, we thin, pruning is essential to produce biomass
and carbon and accelerate plant growth because when trees sprout, there is growth stimulus all over the place,
so look what we have here my eucalyptus trees with three meters
were very close so we are going to remove this line of eucalyptus,
they will be six meters away and we are going to plant mangos. At five meters we are going to remove
all the eucalyptus treetops, prune the side branches, prune the side branches,
leave three to four to encourage sprouting and we are going to plant mangoes
with the native trees. If the system still accepts coffee seedlings, accepts in the sense that we are still
able to plant coffee I believe that the soil is not yet at the level to accept coffee,
but we can do it like citrus that is, a little manure and a little input
in the process. With six meters wide, a lot of light will enter. We have to make a decision:
Do we want this system for grains or for fruits? The process for grains, in the tree line, we cannot
plant fruits that will have big crowns like mangos and citrus because a few years later
the six meters will already be shaded and then we will not be productive. Then it is essential that we decide if
it's going to be grains then I plant in the tree line woods
like eucalyptus, ipe, Brazilian peppertree, mahogany and so I'll have them, I can drastically
prune every year at five meters that won't interfere with the cultivation of grain.
It is crushed, so that is what Ernst is developing,
machines to crush this apical pruning and throw it in the field, and we will have grain production with
rows of trees every six meters. If it's an orchard, you don't need six meters,
it can be four, five, interspersing the strata. Doesn't emergent strata have
to cover only twenty percent? So I plant here, I can skip two rows, I can have
an emergent line every twelve meters, you'll plant more, but with time, if you thin, you'll see the ideal percentage of shade:
20% of emergent, 40% for high, 60% for medium, and 80 to 90%
for low dose the shade over the months. It is essential that in the beginning
it is planted in high density. Here we saw that having many
emergent every three meters is almost a monoculture of emergent strata, there is no light here. 'So let's keep pruning', but eucalyptus
sprouts fast,
it already takes up space a few months later it produces another crown
and it shades again, much more than twenty percent
of the emergent strata so it is fundamental for us to dose
the shade throughtout the process of each strata for our plantations. This is critical. We'll see in the next block, when we left space, we planted the eucalyptus much
more spaced apart and we noticed that the citrus was not developing well,
there was a lack of inputs, we placed it only once, over four years we only placed it once. You will see the difference in growth,
that's why I think it's worth it in the implementation of the tree line
for us to have perfect fertilization, plant cassava, beans and corn along with our trees and plant the trees that will succeed the shade. So if I planted coffee and then castor beans and jack beans at the beginning to shade the coffee,
soon that will be removed, I need to have the next plant that will
have my coffee shaded in the entire cycle that is taking place. We need trees that will protect the crops
that need shade, such as coffee, an medium strata citrus,
a high strata avocado tree, the avocado tree in the high strata needs
twenty percent shade grapes aren't emergent, they're high strata, they need twenty percent shade and then
we will design our agroecosystems to meet this comfort criterion for each
economic crop that we choose for our crops. This line was also planted here in 2017, but eucalyptus here is nine meters high because
we planted grain in some of these larger spaces and we did a single treatment, a year later, to put a little more manure on the line notice the difference in impact a simple management of not so many emergent and putting a little more inputs,
there was practically zero input, four cubic meters of manure for one hectare,
this is practically zero, right? Plus 800kg of limestone, but here after a year
we treated it, we put a little more manure, follow me, look, this is Tahiti lime, these are the Kingwood, which are
the trees of the future that will replace the eucalyptus Another Kingwood. a Longan, another Tahiti lime, a mango
and a jackfruit tree here. I think it's better when we prepare tree lines
in a region as poor as this one, the input we use in is much more a catalyst for reactions
than just a fertilizer, because it will create a much better
environment for the trees, but we you have to plant all the strata
in high density so that, later on, the artificial condition
that we gave to our economic plant, which is a luxury plant, doesn't resent
the lack of manure, because we'll already have the pruning of
everything we planted in high density, If we don't complete the process, in four, five
or six months the manure will run out and we won't have anything to cover the ground
with or anything to nourish that vital environment that was created
in the beginning. In summary about what we talked about
in this video, The proposal determines the design, the spacing that I plant. But actually, deep down I just need to know
the strata that my plant occupies in the forest and its life cycle, so it's possible consort all my trees. The size of the crown I just have to know
in relation to the seedlings I buy grafted because I'm already planting
in the definitive spacing. I don't need to know the crown size of other species
because there is an interactive process. What is interaction? It's a system that you adjust throughout the process. so if I planted everything using seed, the trees are at high density, I would thin and keep that percentage of shade,
because more important than that, you can have a system with twenty percent
of emergent shadow, forty percent shadow in the high strata, sixty
in the medium and eighty to ninety percent on low, but more important than that is
the dynamics I provide for shadow and dynamics that I provide for the system, that is,
I have to drastically prune the medium, high and low strata every year If I don't plant emergent ones that
lose their leaves, I have to thin them or even prune them, so it's good to give preference
to emergente strata plants that lose their leaves, in this way to reach the mature stage of my system
I will reach such percentages of shade, If I spent a lot planting grafted seedlings,
I can't thin or prune, they were expensive, so it's important to know the size of the crown,
as I already plan them in the beginning, in the definitive spacing area. Those with seeds we'll pass through
this interactive process, that we'll thin and prune In the end I'll check, if there are two avocado trees that I planted
with seeds and they are too big, I remove one and leave the other,
I choose best avocado tree. Ernst does this process with cocoa, he plants it
in the three-by-three spacing, but he plants the seeds in the space of
nine square meters. In two years cocoa starts to produce. He's already thinned many but there are
several cocoa trees on that nine square meters, so he always chooses the best of the best,
the most productive, the tastiest one, until the end, in the mature phase,
in those nine square meters I have cocoa tree selected among a hundred, the most resistant to disease, the most productive,
the best formed, that is, the best, the super-high
of the super-high. WHEN OUR ECONOMIC CROP DOMINATES
A CERTAIN STRATA, SUCH AS COCOA OR COFFEE IN THE LOWER STRATA,
WE DON'T PRUNE IT DRASTICALLY. ERNST SAYS THAT, IN THE CASE OF COCOA CROPS,
THEIR ANNUAL PRUNING ONLY CONTRIBUTES TO UP TO 30% OF THE TOTAL BIOMASS
ARISING FROM THE PRUNING. IN THIS CASE, WE FIRST ASSESS
THE NEED FOR PRUNING FOR BETTER FRUCTIFICATION AND PRODUCTION
OF OUR MAIN CULTURE. AGENDA GÖTSCH DO YOU WANT TO LEARN A LANGUAGE?
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