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Cases > Syntropic farming in Brasil
Brazil has been the world’s largest coffee producer for more than 150 years. Around 30% of the global coffee production, comes from Brazil, resulting in 69 million bags (60 kg-bags). Minas Gerais is Brazil’s biggest coffee growing state, planting coffee on more than 1.3 million ha and responsible for 43% of the national production and 65% of national Arabica coffee production. Nearly 123,000 production units are located in Minas Gerais, of which about 95,000 are family farming units.¹
Climate change is progressing faster than expected and the effects of climate change are affecting the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and their agricultural production, as well as ecosystems, in a way that requires rapid actions. Temperatures are rising, pests and diseases are spreading more and more, water scarcity is worsening, extreme weather patterns are making farming a challenge and ecosystems are suffering the consequences of all these changes. Climate change does not stop either when it comes to coffee cultivation. Drier and hotter conditions are jeopardizing arabica coffee production in Minas Gerais. Since 2010, temperatures in coffee-producing municipalities have risen by 1.2° Celsius during the flowering period and projections indicate more days of extreme temperatures (above 34°C) by 2050.² This is consistent with statements of coffee producers in Minas Gerais who complain about lack of water and extreme heat with long dry spells, reducing the resilience of coffee plants. There is a loss of appropriate conditions for the coffee’s eco-physiological needs such as mild forest temperatures and intact soil food web, guaranteeing water availability in the soil throughout the year as it was the case in previous days in the coffee’s country of origin Ethiopia and the beginning of coffee growing era in Brazil.
Coffee in Minas Gerais is typically planted as monoculture crop under full sun. Farmers report that coffee plantations are more and more exposed to pest and disease attacks (such as Leucoptera coffeella (bicho mineiro), Hemileia vastatrix (ferrugem), Hypothenemus hampei (broca-do-café)). In response to this, farmers seek to increase the use of external inputs in form of pesticides and fungicides along with the use of chemical fertilizers. The use of glyphosate is very common, usually there is one application per year destroying 80% of the microbiological life.³ Many coffee producers complain about decreasing coffee productivity over the last few years.
Photos below: Monoculture coffee plantations without any soil cover suffering from dry spell.
The “Syntropic Agroforestry Coffee Project in São Francisco de Paula, Camacho and Candeias municipalities, Minas Gerais, Brazil”⁴ turns those aforementioned problems and challenges to a solution. The Project is implemented in a partnership between Forests4Farming, GrowGrounds and the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung Foundation, and aims to increase the resilience of family coffee farmers in Minas Gerais in relation to climate change.
All the institutions involved have the same concern: to ensure that coffee-growing is in harmony with nature, and to this end they are contributing through the following actions:
The Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS), present in Brazil since 2009, works with more than 450 family coffee growers in the 3 municipalities of São Francisco de Paula, Camacho and Candeias municipalities and aims to improve the social and economic situation of those coffee farmers as well as to promote the prospects of young people in the coffee sector. HRNS will be the partner on the ground.
GrowGrounds, a Danish impact-orientated start-up that focuses on decreasing the negative CO₂ impact of coffee and helps farmers move away from coffee monoculture to syntropic agroforestry systems, while giving farmers access to the global carbon market.
Forests4Farming, through the technology known as syntropic agriculture, created by Swiss researcher and farmer Ernst Götsch, seeks to recreate the shape and function of the original forests of each place through productive restoration, thereby re-establishing natural ecological processes and creating a pleasant environment for each crop, increasing the resilience of plants, turning farmers into the true guardians of biodiversity. F4F will transfer the necessary knowledge and know-how to farmers and technicians in the field.
The project will start end of September 2024 with the implementation of three small trial plots (each around 1,500 m²) on coffee farmers’ own land , creating models that can be replicated on other farms later on. Different tree species, both native and exotic (such as Khaya ivorensis, Cedro Australiano, Inga spp, Enterolobium contortisiliquum (Tamboril), Guazumu ulmifolia (Mutamba), Peltophorum dubium (Canafistula) and others)- identified to grow well in the region – will be planted in high density, i.e. between 800 to 1,100 trees/há in the final stage. The initial density will be even significantly higher, gradually thinning out in the first few years until the final density is reached. The trial plots will be installed with a mix of tree seedlings and seeds, however the objective in the mid-term would be to plant the majority of trees with seeds, being cheaper and providing the luxury in choosing the fittest trees. It was Ernst Götsch – the founder of the syntropic farming concept – who introduced the term “mother tree” characterizing fast growing-, deep rooting-trees which respond well to annual pollarding and are easy to manage. By annually pollarding⁵ those “mother trees” at a height of around 5 to 6m, huge amount of organic matter is provided (up to 2 to 4 times more than in a natural forest) resulting in continuously covered and revitalized soils and rejuvenation together with induction for vigorous new growth of all plants is achieved. The pollarded material can be arranged to the coffee rows as either shredded or un-shredded material. In addition, around 70 fruit trees (such as avocado, mango, jackfruit, citrus, macadamia, pecan nut) and approximately 20 emergent trees⁶ per ha are integrated. Finally, beans and cassava help to raise the trees, since they provide shade and provide nutrients to the young trees. In addition, cassava helps to aerate compacted soils. Grass is planted along the tree rows to produce additional organic matter. This way photosynthesis can be maximized, soils continuously be covered, external inputs significantly reduced or even completely avoided, and the dynamics of the agroforestry system maintained, all important principles under the syntropic farming concept. Coffee productivity is not expected to decrease, but on the contrary, productivity tends to increase. One of the most interesting emerging properties of this model is the production of fruit and wood in the same area as the farmer produces coffee, increasing his income in the medium and long term, with the fundamental by-product being the production of black soil, i.e. the improvement of the soil’s physical, chemical and biological conditions, reducing erosion, increasing water retention and the availability of nutrients.
Photo to the right: Tree row planted as a windbreak in a coffee plantation, a project carried out by the HRNS Foundation in 2013, showing the potential of trees with coffee. The farmers reported that the coffee close to this tree row has more homogeneous maturation and does not show the characteristic of biennial performance, i.e. a year with a good coffee yield is followed by a year with a quite low coffee yield for the coffee plant to recompose.
The project’s objective is to convert up to 500 ha full-sun monoculture coffee plantation over 5 years into agroforestry systems following syntropic farming principles.
¹ Global Coffee Platform (2023), Living Income in Brazilian Coffee Production, https://www.globalcoffeeplatform.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/1-LIVING-INCOME_GCP_english_OK-FINAL.pdf.
² https://news.mongabay.com/2023/10/how-climate-change-could-jeopardize-brazilian-coffee/
³ According to information provided by SoilFoodWeb
⁴ The project is also occasionally communicated under the title ‘Cultivating Syntropic Agroforestry on Coffee Farms in Brazil for Resilient Futures’.
⁵ Pollarding means the removal of the upper branches of a tree (the crown), which promotes the growth of a dense head of foliage and branches, to keep trees smaller than they would naturally grow.
⁶ Emergent trees form the highest stratum rising above the canopy of a forest.
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