The Impact of Syntropic Agroforestry on Water Usage and Farm Resilience

“Planting water”: How agroforestry helped crops become drought resilient – A real-life example

The personal testimony of Roland van Reenen, a Forest Farmer from Curaçao’

It was the year 2019, and I was organizing a 5 days intensive course on syntropic agroforestry on the Caribbean island of Curaçao for the Ministry of Health, Environment and Nature. I invited 2 excellent teachers with experience from similar projects in Brazil who were both direct students of the legendary Ernst Gotsch, founder of syntropic agroforestry.

I remember it like it was yesterday, how Thiago Gimenez Barbosa and Murilo de Lima were shocked to see the bad condition of our small island and the level of degradation of our agricultural soils. They spoke with full admiration about the local spiky acacia varieties and different cacti that were trying to regenerate the landscape. However, during the colonial period, they became dry due to a reckless cutting of the tropical rainforest that once must have covered the island. Until then, most people believed that the semi-arid climate zone (where we are located) with periods of about 7 months without any significant rainfall is the reason behind this failure, and there was no way to turn things around and make it work.

During the course, the experts challenged us with questions like why papayas don’t grow naturally on our island. Most of us blamed it on the lack of rainfall, but they explicitly told us that it had nothing to do with the rain but instead with the lack of sufficient organic matter in the soil.

The next discussion point was whether we would implement irrigation or not. They were against the idea of irrigation, but we, as practitioners and growers, stood our ground; Curaçao was not like Brazil, for in Curaçao, we needed to irrigate at least 4-liter water per m2 per day to grow anything.

The farm we implemented (used as a case study) during the course became a lush green agroforest, and after six months, the expert guests urged us to stop the irrigation. However, again, we were afraid to do so, and we tried to change their minds. To find a middle ground and calm our concerns, the experts asked us to stop irrigating for just 3 days as an experiment to see how it goes. With a heavy heart, we gave in, only to find out that the crops were thriving as if nothing had changed.

So, the next step was to stop irrigation for 5 days. When we noticed the resilience of the farm, we extended the period of no irrigation to 7, then 10, 14 days, and at the end, 20 days without a single drop of irrigation. We didn’t irrigate for 40 days at a certain moment, but then we had one rainfall in between.

So, in the end, we realized that our syntropic agroforestry farm needed only to be irrigated once every 3 weeks. This was a revolutionary change from our experience of irrigating 4 liters of water per square meter daily. Unfortunately, there was still some skepticism among the island farmers. However, this completely revolutionized my worldview, and it became my genesis in spreading this methodology across the globe.

In the next article, I will describe the dynamics of “planting water” in more detail.

Further studying

Verified Wikifarmer Expert in Sustainable Agriculture: Systems, Principles and Practices

Water Conservation Measures: The role of Mombasa grass in a Syntropic System

Roland van Reenen

Forest Farmer

Verified

Born in 1964 in the Netherlands Roland always had a curiosity for nature and cultural diversity. In 1998 he started a career in the organic food industry as the manager of what became in 2000 the very first organic supermarket in the Netherlands (Estafette de biologische eetwinkel). In 2013 he discovered permaculture and from that moment he was at the beginning of his genesis. In 2015 he moved to Curacao in the Caribbean with a solid mission in his mind: to research how permaculture could make a difference in a drougth stricken deforestated area. With zero budget he established a food-forest around his house and started to give workshops. In the same time he started a weekly organic food subscription for about 80 subscribers bringing organic food direct from the farmer to the consumer. In 2018 he was personally asked by the minister of agriculture Sra Suzy Carmelia Romer to build up a few permaculture plots for educational purposes and in 2019 he organised an intensive course about syntropic agroforestry with teachers from Brazil. He is still leading a project with the aim of implementing this farming technique in Curacao. In 2019 also he has been asked by the government to become a mentor for the Regenerative Organic Agriculture Program provided by the Maharishi University in Iowa. In June he started a function as a mentor for courses hydroponics presented by the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. Till the end of November 2021 he and his colleagues were setting up syntropic agroforestry plots every weekend with students of the online syntropic farming course provided by the ministry of agriculture. Recently they trained also about 50 people in Ghana and also about 50 people in Zimbabwe. In November he founded with Esther Njeri their company Syntropic and Permaculture Solutions Limited in Kenya and received a work permit for Kenya. He is convinced that he could offer solutions with their company for drought stricken areas in Kenya. Up till now he trained about 1200 people in the Caribbean and larger parts of Africa and established about 50 farms.

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