
Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable - shrthnd
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/investors-find-agroforestry-isnt-just-climate-friendly-it-can-also-be-profitable/
======
freeqaz
I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential
for automation by the software field.

Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to
build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now,
starting with combine harvesters[1].

But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem --
they breed and spread disease. And on the soil nutrient side, you have to keep
re-fertilizing (and often over-fertilize[3]) every year to keep it going. And
still nutrients continue to decline in the food that Americans are eating[4].

If, as a field (of software engineers), we can figure out a way to build
robots that allow growing and harvesting plants in heterogeneous environments,
that will be a significant step forward to fixing these problems. I'm
optimistic that it will be possible in the next decade to build it and make it
profitable. :)

If you don't have to use fertilizer and pests don't eat your crops because you
haven't created the ideal breeding ground for pests + disease, then this
problem should be solved by market forces alone. At least, I hope so!

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping)

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester)

2:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping#Monocropping_diff...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocropping#Monocropping_difficulty)

3:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Environmental_effec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer#Environmental_effects)

4:
[https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1...](https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml)

~~~
konschubert
Wouldn’t it be easier to just plant something else every other year?

I thought this was solved literally 1000 years ago:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
field_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system)

~~~
armenarmen
I was always confused by this as well. Then I spoke to a person working in
agriculture, apparently chemical fertilizers are cheap enough to make crop
rotation redundant.

~~~
AOsborn
As a layman I assumed that was the case. But I understand the bigger issue now
is that both soil and crop nutrients are dropping in farms due to soil
depletion[0].

0: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-
an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-
nutrition-loss/)

~~~
hosh
Yeah. And not only that, the "regenerative agriculture" mentioned in the
article isn't just about sustainable practices, where we put back into the
soilwhat we take out. Regenerative practices includes practices where soil
fertility is built up year after year as a result of the agricultural
practices. In other words, you can take a depleted land and bring it back up
into productive land, and potentially, become more productive than non-
regenerative practices.

You can grow more than a single plant together, and depending on the
combination, they can synergize in a way that helps both of them grow. Some of
that is due to pest management (where one plant species deters pests that raid
the other). Some add nutrients (nitrogen fixers and other dynamic
accumulators). Some can grow at different canopy layers (such as growing
ground cover to help retain moisture while taller plants are used as trellises
for vining plants).

Some plants have deep tap roots that break up compacted soil and help draw out
nutrients to make them bioavailable. Many of them are pioneer plants and are
considered weeds or considered invasive.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Much of big Ag is an effort to shortcut all this. Use a chisel plow to break
up compacted soil. Add ammonia. Use earth movers to create more flat land with
useful soils. Etc.

The advantages are clear: you can decide when to do these things, and do them
on a short schedule. Its hard to argue waiting 5 years for some remediation
project to maybe work, when I have a chisel plow right over there in the shed.

~~~
hosh
Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative.
Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern
commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be
in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them.
Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define
wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people.

I think the main path out of this is to have decentralized food systems, and
this is where regenerative and resilient design patterns really shine. I think
it starts with a shift in the mindset, where instead of seeing wealth as
coming from extraction and hoarding, to seeing wealth in terms of being
stewards of regenerative processes.

We have pseudo-regenerative processes in the financial sector with compounding
interest, but you can't directly eat money. I can eat the stuff from my
backyard.

The beautiful thing about participating in building a decentralized food
system is that I don't have to convince you, or anyone else on HN to affect
collective action. I can start doing these things in my home, and trade things
with other like-minded people. I can offer up the excess abundance to my
friends, family, and neighbors. Some of them may want to take up the practices
themselves.

Just to be clear, I used shortcuts too. I am using raised beds and importing
compost and manure (buying them from big box stores). But I'm also taking the
time to plant edible perennials. I only found out later, there are many ways
to get even quicker turn around time -- sprouts, fast growing annuals,
succession planting. I'm learning. Next year's growing season will incorporate
more.

~~~
dhd7r7eu3
>Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be
regenerative.

Can you expand on this point some? I'm trying to understand but I don't really
see the problem. Whether the nutrition comes from the soil or the fertilizer
doesn't really seem that important. I get what other posters have said about
vegetables in the past being more nutritious but it's not clear to me that
this matters terribly much compared to the accessibility gains from produce
being cheaper and still nutritious (ableit less so).

~~~
EdwardDiego
...where does the fertiliser come from?

Currently, there's a lot of fossil fuels involved.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Ammonia created from fossil fuels accounts for 2% of carbon emmisions, but it
seems likely that ammonia created from air and water with renewable energy
will replace it in the future. Theres some pilot plants in existance.

------
jeffbee
The feds would have to stop distorting the markets in the West before any of
this could happen economically, right? People didn't just forget how to grow
orchards and pastures. They got run out of business by the California water
projects and the BLM. As long as the BLM keeps leasing out grazing land for
$1/acre and as long as Reclamation allows Stewart Resnick to grow 100k acres
of nuts on otherwise worthless land, how can sustainable growers compete?

~~~
harikb
Just so people aren't confused, BLM == Bureau of Land Management

~~~
skrebbel
Hahaha I had this weird picture in my head of an angry mob of protestors
leasing out grazing land for $1/acre.

------
gdubs
The book that got me into this was Mark Shepard's 'Restoration Agriculture".
[1] His "New Forest Farm" in WI has been making use of these ideas for some
time now. [2]

Shepard got _his_ inspiration from Permaculture [3] and the books, "Tree
Crops", [4] and "The One Straw Revolution". [5]

1: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-
agr...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-agriculture)

2: [https://newforestfarm.us](https://newforestfarm.us)

3:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381988.Permaculture](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/381988.Permaculture)

4:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714112.Tree_Crops](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/714112.Tree_Crops)

5:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/976905.The_One_Straw_Rev...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/976905.The_One_Straw_Revolution)

~~~
mahaganapati
One Straw Revolution changed my life. It inspired me to learn permaculture
first hand. It's such an enjoyable book to read

~~~
mkmk2
Seconded, also a great read if you're just casually interested

------
nothal
It's really wild to me that investors realizing foresting exists and continues
to exist because it makes money is a story. I did forestry related club stuff
in high school for a program called Envirothon and there's a rich history of
silviculture in the US and Europe going back a long ways. IIRC, we actually
have more forest in the US today than 100 years ago because of silviculture.
Notably, the Vanderbilt's started modern silviculture in the US and introduced
all sorts of interesting measurements only relevant to foresters to the US
like a chain (66 ft imperial) or Diameter Breast Height (the circumference of
a tree at 4.5 ft, because that was right around the breast of your average
heighted forester).

~~~
hef19898
Fun fact, one of the first detailed concepts of sustainability comes from
forestry in Germany by Hans Carl von Carlowitz in 1713.

[https://www.forstwirtschaft-in-
deutschland.de/index.php?id=5...](https://www.forstwirtschaft-in-
deutschland.de/index.php?id=53&L=1)

~~~
riffraff
Japan also started protecting forests and managing them sustainably a long
time ago[0], in the Edo period (1603-1868).

[0]
[https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03912/](https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c03912/)

------
ForrestN
I got quite deep into the article, but couldn't get through the morass of PR
to understand the basic idea of their agroforestry initiative. At one point,
they actually write that a lightbulb went off... but what is the new idea?

Is there anyone familiar with this field who tell a clear story of what their
idea is, and how planting trees in existing farms will work in practice to
accomplish all the results they predict? I'm sure it's an interesting story.

~~~
freeqaz
I think there are a few benefits that they're (poorly) trying to articulate in
the article, so I'll fill in with my own (biased) thoughts. :)

\- Growing trees in rows alongside feed crops (like hay) is more profitable
for farmers because they gain additional income from fruit trees + lumber
sales.

\- More trees that get to grow pulls CO2 from the atmosphere and is good for
the environment.

\- There is a symbiotic relationship with the soil and trees that is
beneficial for the health of other plants. This also helps with soil blowing
away due to wind barriers + roots holding it down. Less erosion.

\- Pests can't travel as easily between "segmented" fields of crops because
they are obstructed by trees. This helps mitigate risk for farmers.

\- Higher income per acre when you intermix trees in the fields where
livestock graze. You can go harvest the fruit trees while the grass grows for
the cows to graze on.

The problem is that these changes require time to make. Trees don't sprout up
overnight and that's a problem for farmers, but there is a big environmental
incentive for it. Maybe the government should step in to incubate these kinds
of projects? They may be the only institution with the long-term economic
incentive to do so.

~~~
mikeg8
This is a great answer, thank you for articulating. My only disagreement would
be in regards to government being the only institution with the economic
incentive to do invest here, long-term. From my understanding of the federal
governments involvement in agriculture subsidies, the government seems to be
much more in support of the entrenched, large-scale industrial farming
systems. I hope for a future where our department of agriculture comes around
to support these holistic farming practices.

~~~
danans
> My only disagreement would be in regards to government being the only
> institution with the economic incentive to do invest here, long-term.

If not government what other sort of institution do you think has the ability
to make such civilization scale investments, with the associated short-term
risks? Corporations won't do it, nor will venture capital, private equity,
investment banks, retail investors. What's left?

> From my understanding of the federal governments involvement in agriculture
> subsidies, the government seems to be much more in support of the
> entrenched, large-scale industrial farming systems.

Which kind of demonstrates that it's capable of supporting a long-term
investment in agriculture, but that it is perhaps putting that support behind
the wrong approach considering the threat of climate change.

------
hodgesrm
It's really surprising to me that we tend to focus on sustainability rather
than simple economic benefits when pitching initiatives to combat climate
change.

Case in point: The US had a great opportunity to sell alternative energy
sources as way to get off Middle East oil after 9/11\. Instead we continued to
consume oil like there's no tomorrow while squandering trillions on fruitless
wars.

~~~
evilsetg
The valuing of (short-term) economic benefit over sustainability is precisely
what is fueling climate change.

~~~
fillskills
I would go a little further and say that short term economic benefits of
existing entrenched players is causing harm. Its taking too long to get those
people out and replaced with fresh minds who can look at the same systems and
find new ways to make money while having a sustainable earth

------
shrthnd
"If farmers increased silvopasture acreage from approximately 550 million
hectares today to about 770 million hectares by 2050 (1.36 billion acres to
1.9 billion acres), Drawdown estimated carbon dioxide emissions could be
reduced over those 30 years by up to 42 gigatons — more than enough to offset
all of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans globally in 2015, according to
NOAA — and could return $206 billion to $273 billion on investment."

~~~
zdragnar
Note that silvopasture is a combination of livestock grazing pasture and
trees. The opposite method it would replace is the factory farm where animals
are much more concentrated (with all the moral issues involved).

The problem, I think, is one of volume- I don't see the factory farms shutting
down in favor of techniques that require broader skill sets (tree harvesting,
land management) beyond what they are already hiring for and investing
technology in, especially since per-square-area production of meat is
substantially smaller.

I would love to see factory farms convert to silvopasture, especially if that
means lower prices for things like nuts, but the broader skill set and
management challenges make me think they will continue to be niche competitors
to, not replacements of, our current supply.

~~~
riffraff
> if that means lower prices for things like nuts,

aren't nuts in the US stupid cheap as it is? American almonds are everywhere
in Europe, and cost less than locally grown ones.

(And they taste of nothing, I am not sure if it's because they get harvested
earlier, because of preservation or because of the cultivar)

~~~
zdragnar
As for almonds, probably a combination of cultivar and picking time.

Some nuts are still very expensive, though, and pound for pound beef can be
cheaper than many.

------
reginaldo
Ever since watching the video on syntropic agriculture which I bumped into by
reading a comment here in HN [1], I've been doing some research on the matter.
The practice seems promising. It seems to work at both small and large scales,
so it enables small farms, which are very hard to defend as a business in the
US. It also has a component of improving the value of land, by making marginal
(sandy) terrain into productive agricultural land. The other interesting fact
is that the productivity per acre for the individual cultivars when planted
together is higher than if they were the only thing being planted. I can see
those things combining to drastically increase products.

The part of the video that was the most interesting was the farmer saying
"this works. If I don't sell, I don't live, and I do sell" (not an exact
quote).

Intriguing indeed.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23631196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23631196)
/
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE)

------
dzink
Why many buzzwords? In simpler language: trees surrounding farm land keep
strong winds from blowing nutrients away and have other benefits. For that and
other benefits Before 1989, a lot of farm land in Bulgaria was surrounded by
tree belts as they also provided shade for farm workers. In the US much bigger
efficiency has been achieved by farming large fields with giant automated
machinery. Effect on nutrients is unclear. However what this company is
suggesting is to pair farmers of different types and plant productive trees
between flat crop lands to enable multiple types of production happening at
the same time. An underlying premise is a carbon offset system may pay for
such investment. The part that’s missing is how much harvesting efficiency
will be lost when you lose the ability to use big machines to harvest single
crops. That said, there may be lands suitable for mixed farming that were
underused before. Hopefully those farmers don’t get into too much debt trying
to pursue potential carbon credits.

------
hosh
The article doesn't mention permaculture. Permaculture has been used
commercial settings (and its design principles includes agroforestry). Permies
have been talking about resilient and regenerative systems for a long while
now, going beyond sustainability.

Permaculture design looks at the whole system. So not just trees, but also
things to plant with the trees. With planting along contours and adding swales
to catch rainfall, and direct it to flow through everything. Incorporating
animals into the system, such as grazers (cows, sheep, goats), and
micrograzers (chickens, ducks, geese).

Probably the biggest thing not discussed in the article is how permaculture
design can lead to decentralized food systems. A decentralized food system is
not something that VCs can invest capital in and expect multiple returns on,
but I think in the long run, that is where we as a civilization need to move
towards.

~~~
minerjoe
Not just food. Let's "localize" all of our needs. Every single one of them.
Note that is "needs", not wants.

There will always be room for trade in things that you cannot produce locally
such as coffee, but for almost every other thing, there are local solutions.

Open Source Ecology [1] attempts to go the high-tech route and they may get
somewhere, but they are only one of many approaches to localizing. With the
internet we can have many groups working on localizing their own needs and
sharing their successes and failures with the world. Add some gamification and
wholla we have people competing to actully figure out how to live on this
planet while leaving the place better afterwards.

Note that a completely local system would probably not have much need at all
for state backed currency except for trade. [1]
[http://www.opensourceecology.org](http://www.opensourceecology.org)

~~~
lambertsimnel
Does local production entail urban areas having smaller or less dense
populations? Mightn't energy used for extra passenger transport outweigh
energy saved by reducing freight transport?

~~~
minerjoe
Don't know. There are people in cities working on local food production such
as aquaponics, vertical farming, rooftops, etc, but I live in a small town in
western North America and that is the system I am attempting to analyze and
influence. Its the low hanging fruit (ahem), in that if a small town can't do
it, how can you expect a city.

------
einpoklum
This is a weird piece in that it seems to completely ignore the massive
subsidies [1] the agriculture sector of most (?) industrialized economies
relies on.

Then when you read:

> [Someone] estimates that agroforestry systems can create eight times more
> profit than conventional agriculture.

you have to ask yourself: "Profit after subsidies? But who said you'll get the
same subsidies? If you can actually turn a profit, they might not subsidize
you at that point?"

\----

[1] - For more information on these subsidies (which I'm not opposed to, it's
complicated):

* In the EU it's apparently 59 Billion EUR/year , according to this: [https://farmsubsidy.org/](https://farmsubsidy.org/)

* Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy)

~~~
reillyse
I like the European farm subsidies, I think they are a great example of how to
share wealth among a lot of citizens and maintain high quality food. Btw, 59
Billion seems like a large number but compared to the actual GDP of the EU
thats a very very small number. Also in the US for example farm subsidies are
pretty high and generally funnel to rich people, there is both farm related
subsidies that go direct to farmers and insurance companies (among others) and
then the farm bill which is another huge subsidy.

~~~
einpoklum
I actually didn't say I oppose them. However, note that better-off Europeans
and US citizens are subsidized, then their products flood the markets
elsewhere and farmers all over the world - who also don't have access to
appropriate technology - can't compete against it. So the farmers in poorer
countries get screwed. Not such a great example of wealth sharing...

~~~
reillyse
Did you edit your original comment? I recall there being more emphasis and an
exclamation point or two :)

~~~
einpoklum
Yes, I did...

------
vram22
Gabe Brown has been doing regenerative agriculture for over two decades on
Brown's Ranch, over 2000 acres, in Bismarck, North Dakota successfully. Food
crops plus cover crops plus livestock, all integrated. Lot of good results
compared to neighboring farmers doing the traditional synthetic fertilizer /
pesticide / tilling / monoculture approach.

There are others like him too.

And he's been invited to and giving a lot of talks about it at many confs for
years:

Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets
of Soil Health"

[https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A](https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A)

------
jessaustin
This seems like a scam to me. The reason VCs don't fund "normal" crops like
wheat etc. is that commodities don't generate the high profits that make
"unicorns" possible. There have been fewer people employed in agriculture in
USA every year for the last 150 years. The only long-term successful firms are
selling "picks and shovels", and even they have to resort to evil to generate
reliable profits (Monsanto, etc.) All of the crops under discussion in TFA are
also commodities. Where is the profit going to arise? These venture funds will
not return investors' money.

~~~
Vysero
It seems fishy to me as well knowing that most farmers operate at a loss each
year. Whatever profit a system like this might generate would have to be
enough to offset those losses whilst still providing enough to keep the
farmers happy along with the investors?? Seems pretty damn unlikely that this
"agroforestry" is capable of doing that.

------
dharma1
Anyone here have some woodland and use it for growing food crops (mix of fruit
trees, nut trees, root vegetables, berries and mushrooms?) This is something
I've been thinking about trying for a while. Or maybe converting pasture land
to more mixed purpose?

I realise it's not something you can scale or automate easily, but I'm not
really looking for that. Just a few hectares for personal use. I understand it
will take many years for the trees to grow

~~~
vram22
Check out permaculture, food forests and Geoff Lawton videos (he covers both,
and food forests are a subset of permaculture). He is a permaculture boss who
learned from Bill Mollison, father of permaculture. Check (his) Zaytuna Farm
video tour parts 1 and 2. Australia is big on permaculture but many other
countries' people are doing it too. Huw Richards (Wales, UK), Maddy and Tim
Harland (UK), Krishna McKenzie (Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India), Pete Kanaris
(Florida, USA), Richard Perkins (Sweden) are just a few. All those named have
YouTube videos.

------
poorna12
An initiative worth looking at :

The Complete What, Why & How of Agroforestry

[https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/blog/article/complete-
what-w...](https://isha.sadhguru.org/us/en/blog/article/complete-what-why-how-
agroforestry)

------
jelliclesfarm
I would like to create/see robots that seed and plant Miyawaki style dense
mini forests in urban areas.

I don’t live in the right zone, but I tell my friends in the lower hemispheres
that when they have a child, they must plant at least 1/2 acre of forest. Or a
fruit orchard or a hardwood grove. Why? Because at its worst, it’s Ag but is
green and income producing. And at its best it’s green, Carbon sequestering
long term..medium benefits for a hardwood grove with ebony or teak or rosewood
that are super slow growing and will grow with the child..leaving them a
legacy and an inheritance.

If anyone wants to collaborate for such a project, please reach out(my handle
at gmail). I am still researching for the northern hemisphere.

------
landon32
One cool company working on this in the UK:
[https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative-
agroforestry](https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative-agroforestry)

------
soobrosa
Might be a bit more complicated. "Underground deserts below fertility islands?
Woody species desiccate lower soil layers in sandy drylands"
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.04906](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.04906)

------
carapace
Better late than never.

The guy who invented/coined "Syntropic" agriculture grows the world's best
cocoa beans at 3x the yield of similar-quality conventional farms with no
inputs. He also gets a lot of other crops from the same land.

Life is four-billion-year-old nanotech and it works really well. Get with it
money dudes.

(Conventional agriculture is, in retrospect, almost the dumbest thing you can
do with land.)

------
Ericson2314
> Vulcan Farm in Illinois combines intensive perennial polyculture,
> windbreaks, alley cropping, and silvopasture, and also features an
> innovative long-term lease model that provides options to non-operator
> landholders and land access for agroforestry farmers

Ah, so VCs have discovered sharecropping.

------
poma88
True story, land use when sustainable delivers long term benefits of all
kinds, also to investors

------
abalone
_> If farmers increased silvopasture acreage from approximately 550 million
hectares today to about 770 million hectares by 2050... carbon dioxide
emissions could be reduced over those 30 years by up to 42 gigatons — more
than enough to offset all of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans globally in
2015_

This is both exciting and depressing. A massive effort and it still only
offsets 1/30th of global emissions.

Fixing climate is not going to be based in “profitability”, at least in any
near term sense. It is about dramatically reducing our CO2-based economic
activity to preserve the planet for future generations. Capitalism is not
geared for that kind of calculation.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> and investor financing to help add trees and tree crops to agricultural
> models.

Wow, sounds profitable I suppose.

------
mikeg8
If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend checking out Joel
Salatin and Polyface Farm. They are doing amazing work.
[http://www.polyfacefarms.com/](http://www.polyfacefarms.com/)
[https://vimeo.com/125404937](https://vimeo.com/125404937)

~~~
minerjoe
And Mark Shepherd at New Forest Farm.

[http://newforestfarm.us](http://newforestfarm.us)

His book "Restoration Agriculture" details his system, which can be likened to
agroforestry.

------
codecamper
Investors say yada is good for you. ok?

------
ruffrey
There's a startup working on this called Propagate Ventures. IIRC they have an
agroforestry project planning tool for farmers.

------
ngngngng
> It turns out, people NEED food. Really, it's remarkable. And they'll
> actually pay dollars for food that you've grown, so that they can then eat
> it, because otherwise they'll die.

~~~
einpoklum
Surprisingly, that's not quite true.

That is, people do need food, but humanity over-produces food massively
already [1]. And in many countries, you'll collapse economically if you try to
live by selling food - and it's government subsidies which keep farming
afloat.

[1] - Of course there's also massive hunger due to the failure of our species
to more reasonably distribute the food it produces, biases in which kinds of
food get produced where and when etc.

------
jbeales
So they rediscovered orchards?

~~~
dhruvkar
ernst gotsch is the name to lookup.

Growing food under a forest canopy with plenty of pruning, which creates
healthy soil and less/no need for fertilizers. It's an effort to mimic a
forest ecosystem and let things grow in their natural way (livestock is
another aspect).

~~~
depthroiler
Very cool. Thanks for the ref! Are there any books of his you'd recommend?

~~~
dhruvkar
I don't have book recommendations, but this channel is worth watching:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9s-yeskYZweEuKyq1ia6w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9s-yeskYZweEuKyq1ia6w)

