Agricultura sintrópica: produzindo alimentos na floresta, das raízes do aipim ao dossel das castanheiras

Abstract

With the evolution of the genus Homo, both intellectually and physically, an important phase of history began: the Neolithic farming revolution. The planet came to know an activity that so far hadn’t been part of the relations between living beings: farming. Over the centuries the landscape has changed, along with the evolution of techniques to carry on such activity. The most affected environments were forest ecosystems, as the introduction of fire and cutting tools allowed the forest to be put down and burned for later agricultural planting. The advance of this management, along with the continuous increase of domesticated species, has provided the expansion of framing for great part of the world. In modern times, this activity has reached great proportions, influenced mainly by the green revolution, genetics, chemistry and biotechnology, that became widely present in the farming environment .Therefore, it is evident the degradation that this practice brings to life. As an attempt to confront this situation agroecology has been trying to rescue and improve practices that are well-adjusted to the dynamics of nature. When dealing with a science that involves many areas of knowledge, agroecology is based on working with the flow of life and natural processes. An activity that is related to agro ecological science is agroforestry systems, which basically has the purpose of forest restoration, food production and products for use in human daily life. However, in a more intense sense of the agroforestry system, there is an activity developed by the Swiss farmer / researcher Ernst Götsch, with his theory and practice has been developing for almost forty years the work of forest recovery and food production, called Syntropic Farming. So, the work aims to perform an analysis of the Syntropic Farming, considering its foundations and empirical applications. For the analysis of the empirical experiments, three areas were selected that follow the management proposed and developed by Götsch, located in the states of Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul and in the Federal District. In order to fulfill this objective, the research had different stages. Being carried out research and readings of bibliographical references; interviews; visitation to the selected areas, to acquire knowledge of the history and composition of the agroforestry systems in question and direct observation; implantation and evaluation of an agroforestry system in a town, called Sananduva - RS, in the property of the own author. The results indicate that the Syntropic Farming shows great potential for forest recovery, together with the restoration of the micro fauna due to the constant presence of organic matter in the soil. It is noteworthy the great production of food, both in quantity and in quality. The potential of replicability of the Syntropic Farming in the three analyzed experiences was also verified, considering some selected central aspects. Since the cultivation is based on the processes of the forest, an important effect is in the autonomy that the system provides to the farmer.