What is Regenerative Agroforestry?

One of the first Agroforestry definitions was published in 1977, defined Agroforestry as:

“a sustainable management system for land that increases overall production, combines agricultural crops, tree crops, and forest plants and/or animals simultaneously or sequentially, and applies management practices that are compatible with the cultural patterns of the local population.”

BENE, J.G.; BEALL, H.W.; CÔTÉ, A. Trees, food, and people: land management in the tropics. International Development Research Centre. 52 p., 1977 


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The Agroforestry Center of Missouri University defines Agroforestry as:

“Trees and shrubs deliberately integrated with crops or livestock.”

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The World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) has suggested the following definition of Agroforestry: 

“Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials are deliberately used on the same land-management units as agricultural crops and/ or animals, in either a spatial arrangement or a temporal sequence.

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Agroforestry by definition requires a synergistic interaction between species. 

7 Key Tools

Agroforestry offers seven key tools:

• Alley Cropping: is the cultivation of food, forage or specialty crops between rows of trees. 
• Forest Farming : growing high-value specialty crops under the forest canopy
• Forest Gardening : is a designed agronomic system based on trees, shrubs and perennial plants that mimic the structure of a natural forest.
• Urban Food Forests: intential use of perennial food-producing  plants to improve the sustainability and resilience of urban communities.
• Silvopasture:  integration of livestock and trees
• Windbreaks – rows of trees to protect soil, crops, and/or livestock from wind
• Riparian Buffer: is an area adjacent to a stream, lake or wetland that contains trees, shrubs or other perennial plants which helps to shade and protect the water body from the impact of adjacent land-use.

In recent years Syntropic Agriculture/Agroforestry has received a lot of attention. Syntropic Agrofrestry is a type of Alley Cropping system that works with the dynamics of Time & Space: Succession, Plant Lifecycles and Stratification as well as utilizes strategies like pruning and selective weeding. It has a high focus on management and the beneficial interaction of humans and the ecosystem they are participating in.Syntropic Agriculture/Agroforestry has been a great inspiration for our work.

Regenerative Agroforestry

For us Regenerative Agroforestry is one way forward into the future that can support small scale and larger scale farmers on the path of regeneration of our production landscapes and at the same time create socially flourishing and economic abundant bioregional communities. 

Regenerative Agroforestry is already practiced in many countries worldwide by 1000s of small-scale farmers in tropical climates and in recent years in Temperate Climates. Also some mechanized, larger scale farm trails have been implemented in various countries.

Regenerative Agroforestry mimics the STRUCUTURE & FUNCTION of Forest Ecosystems and works with SPACE (Stratification) & TIME  (Succession, Plant Lifecycles) while producing a variety of economically viable yields utilizing a HIGH DENSITY & HIGH DIVERSITY of annual and perennial plants. 

We integrate knowledge and experiences from various fields like Analog Forestry,Syntropic Agriculture, Permaculture, Holistic Management,Natural Farming and Agro-ecology into our Regenerative Agroforestry practice to be able to increase profitability while at the same time regenerating the soil and ecosystem health.

Regenerative Agroforestry increases economic and ecological benefits through maximizing eco-system services such as carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, water-holding capacity and photosynthetic potential while offering climate and nutritional resilience and diversified multi-capital yields.

Regenerative Agroforestry is a PROCESS & CYCLIC based Agriculture Production system offering solutions and alternatives to the highly toxic and destructive INPUT & LINEAR based Industrial Agriculture Production systems.

Regenerative Agroforestry aims to work with the dynamics of nature to increase QUALITY & QUANTITY of consolidated life in the area of our intervention. Agriculture is a inherently anthropogenic activity that can be guided by unconditional love, empathy and inner pleasure so we can become a useful species once again in the ecosystem we interact with. We all can be stewards and co-creators of healthy vibrant life.

Why We Need Regeneration

What is Regeneration?

For us REGENERATION is about the capacity to re-build or to evolve to another level to be able to sustain healthy thriving life on the long-term for our future generations and all life forms. 

We acknowledge the need for total systems transformation and aim to contribute to the Regeneration of:

• Ecosystem and Production Landscape Health
• Soil Health
• Public Health through nutritionally dense high brix food as medicine
• Small-scale Farmers Economic Flourishing
• Our connection to nature, ourselves and other forms of life

Why Do We Need Regeneration?

“Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.” By E. O. Wilson

We have to understand the deep interrelationship between our Food System, Agriculture Crop Production and human and ecological flourishing. 

In the early 1900s more than half of Americans for example were either Farmers or lived in rural communities. Since the early 1900 and the beginning of “Industrial Farming” which promoted the use of big machinery and chemical inputs we saw a vast amount of SPECIALIZATION leading to genetically modified monoculture crops, reduction in genetics of farm animals and traditional open-pollinated seeds as well as the eradication of trees from our production landscapes which created every higher soil erosion. Many soil scientists are warning us that we have about 60 years of Topsoil left if we continue our current unsustainable soil management practices. The ever greater SPECIALIZATION required more and more MECHANIZATION which resulted in a reduction of American workforce involved in agriculture from 41% to 2% between 1900 to 2000 and the CONSOLIDATION towards fewer and fewer farms of which the remaining farms got bigger and bigger. 

This process incentivized greater and greater DISCONNECTION FROM NATURE and drove Industrial Farmers to FIGHT AND WORK AGAINST NATURE instead of being our collaborator she became the farmers enemy. The vast amount of MONOCULTURES covering 1000s of Hectares land can only be sustained by the excessive use of CHEMICAL AND PHARMACEUTICAL INPUTS in just 12 years for example between 1964 and 1975, synthetic and mineral fertilizer application on U.S. crops nearly doubled, while pesticide use increased by 143%. 

Big corporations started to take over the food supply, chemical input production and seed business leading to an OLIGARCHICAL MARKET CONCENTRATION and vertical integration (when companies gain control of multiple industries in the food sector) in many areas of our food system which was now not anymore focused on NOURISHING people but making HIGHEST AMOUNT OF PROFIT and focusing on SHAREHOLDER BENEFITS. All this led us to a PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS and a global CLIMATE EMERGENCY situation. 

The key factors in extreme Weather are excessive heat, precipitation and air moisture. Many scientific studies have shown that monthly mean temperature records, extreme precipitation events and average air moisture content all have risen over the last 50 years – 150 years (see for example Dr. Dim Coumou).

The loss of our fertile soils all around the world, the loss of forest cover and biodiversity going hand in hand with the loss of indigenous seeds and cultural knowledge are a extreme threat to our very survival as a species. The qualitative and nutritional loos of the food we consume has resulted in an unprecedented public health crisis to the point of out of control cancer and hearth disease pandemics coupled with infertility of our population. 

GLOBALIZATION resulted in the exporting under the name of development of our “western and colonial “ neurotic nature-killing cultures & life-ways on a global scale. Our human-created misery of war, economic subjugation, nuclear weaponry and displacement and eradication of people, cultures and their practices and the massive loos of genetic diversity are some of the symptoms of the disconnection of the human race and the lack of regenerative stewardship of what as been given to us as a gift.

Mother Earth was created and started out organic, she has gone through a lot of human abuse, chemical scientific experimentation and genetic-tinkering.  Mother earth is resilient, self-regulating, self-organizing, self-healing and forgiving but she will fight back and come through the back door with a pitchfork if the human race doesn’t change and continues to abuse her.

So WHY do we need Regeneration ? If not NOW when?

The UNEP Report Dead Planet, Living Planet states : Ecosystems, from forests and freshwater to coral reefs and soils, deliver essential services to humankind estimated to be worth over USD 72 Trillion a year – comparable to World Gross National Income (USD 58 Trillion in 2008) . Yet in 2010, nearly two-thirds of the globe’s ecosystems are considered degraded as a result of damage, mismanagement and a failure to invest and reinvest in their productivity, health and sustainability.

The Agrobiodiversity Loss

100 YEARS OF AGRICULTURAL CHANGE: SOME TRENDS AND FIGURES RELATED TO AGROBIODIVERSITY

• Since the 1900s, some 75 percent of plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers worldwide have left their multiple local varieties and landraces for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties.
• 30 percent of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction; six breeds are lost each month
• Today, 75 percent of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species.
• Of the 4 percent of the 250 000 to 300 000 known edible plant species, only 150 to 200 are used by humans. Only three – rice, maize and wheat – contribute nearly 60 percent of calories and proteins obtained by humans from plants.
• Animals provide some 30 percent of human requirements for food and agriculture and 12 percent of the world’s population live almost entirely on products from ruminants

Source: FAO. 1999b

We need to Re-remember the noble aim and original purpose of agriculture:

To grow nourishing crops with nutritional integrity that don’t destroy our land base and are economically viable for the grower without the need for constant outside inputs. 

There are several different pathways of integrated growing systems that facilitated achieving this noble aim and original purpose of agriculture. The production system choice is determined by the context you are nested in and the quality of life you are looking for.

We exist, as a collective initiative to help facilitate the process of Regenerative Food Production so it becomes the status quo and mainstream within two decades.

Origins & Inspirations for Regenerative Agroforestry Systems

Most forest communities in the tropics practiced traditional agriculture utilizing agroforestry systems or forest gardens with the integration of non-timber forest products ex. Sri Lanka Kandy Forest Gardens, Indonesia Java Forest Gardens, Amazon Rainforest Communities. These indigenous communities often combined the cultivation of agricultural crops and timber species. They also frequently use perennial tree crops such as palms, fruit trees, coffee, and cocoa, in combination with annual crops such as cassava, plantains, corn, and beans. Sun loving trees and food crops where usually cultivated early in the cycle, while shade crops such as coffee and cocoa are cultivated underneath a forest canopy. 

These practices have been observed for example by Agroforestry Pioneers like Dr.Ranil   Senanayaka from Sri Lanka or by Ernst Goetsch during his time in South and Central America and who afterwards experimented for many years to evolve these traditional Agroforestry systems further and systematize them. We are in big admiration and incredibly grateful to the various indigenous Agroforestry Practioners as well as to Dr.Ranil   Senanayaka and Ernst Goetsch for their lifelong dedication to the Agroforesty practice, evolution and research. 

Key Challenges for Regenerative Agroforestry Adoption

We have been programmed to “compartmentalize” agriculture, and separate trees from annual crops and taking animals out of our production landscapes because of mechanization ,single crop focus & monocultures, economic pressure and regulatory challenges.

Benefits