AVANT GARDENER
A few columns ago, I wrote about Anitu Forest Food Processing, a small batch chocolatier from Bukidnon and Anitu Food Forest, the syntropic farm that supplies the cacao for the artisanal chocolates.
Fourth-generation farmer Marvi Montecillo recounted his journey to syntropic farming and how establishing his own small syntropic farm amidst his family’s conventional farmed fields has led to personal satisfaction, not to mention his wife Rogen’s (who is a Young Farmers Challenge Awardee) steadily growing chocolate business.
Marvi hails from a family of conventional farmers who cultivated a variety of crops, including sugarcane, bananas, and coconuts. The only farmer in the family, he manages the family farm. His siblings are based in Cagayan de Oro City.
His interest in syntropic farming began around 2016. He started with two hectares, and because he hadn’t found a community to learn from and had to rely on trial and error, it took about eight years to experience positive results. As of the interview, the two hectares, which are mostly planted to banana and cacao, have expanded to six. The banana is sold locally while the cacao is used in Rogen’s chocolate creations. “The bearing of the cacao is 3.5 hectares, and we hope to expand again because there’s more space,” Montecillo said in Taglish.
According to arc2020.eu, syntropic farming is a regenerative agricultural movement founded by Swiss farmer Ernst Götsch. Inspired by the mix of trees and farmland in his youth, Götsch moved to Brazil in 1976, where he developed a highly productive ecological farming system that continues to draw advocates to this day.
Montecillo’s shift to syntropic farming didn’t happen on a whim. “In terms of practicing chemical farming, I tried before. I woke up early, wore the complete stuff, full protection, it’s very heavy. I tried spraying, and 30 minutes along the way, I gave up.”
His farm is too new for him to be able to gauge its productivity, but so far, results have been promising. “We don’t have complete numbers yet… [but] in terms of cacao production, I would say that it’s very competitive.”
One of his biggest proof of concepts came after El Niño. “More than 20+ trees bore fruit compared to other farms, which had small harvests. They were shocked because we didn’t use fertilizer or anything but [our trees] bore a lot of fruit. The DTI visits us regularly.”
A big part of syntropic farming involves observation, experimentation, and course correction. “ We can still improve,” Montecillo said. “Aside from farming, I really do analysis, and it seems like the price of fertilizer… continues to increase, and when it continues to increase, there will be fewer farmers growing. I really think that for us, it’s very important [that] we think [of regenerative farming as] one of the futures of farming.”
He gives a brief summary of the process: “[In syntropic farming], you just plant everything. We have durian, jackfruit, avocado, rambutan, native trees, even cassava, and then we slowly thin them out, so [the] branches… eventually [become] fertilizer. Just like nature, every organism has a purpose, even the grasses, the weeds. Usually, [in] conventional practice, they just spray it [to kill it]. [Here], we need them to cover the ground and mulch the soil so as time goes on, it becomes fertile and once the trees grow, the grasses will be shaded,” he said. “The job of the syntropic farmer is really to observe nature and find the purpose of each species, and if you decide you’re going to be a cacao farmer, coconut farmer, durian farmer, you choose [what’s] best suited to your climate. The other species becomes a support species.”
While this method of farming may be cheaper because it doesn’t use synthetic chemicals, Montecillo cautions that the tradeoff is that it’s very labor-intensive. “ But with the machinery, I think we can really cut down the cost of labor. With more technology applied to this type of farming, I think it’s going to be very good.”
Soil health is extremely important. “In business, you’re always investing in the soil and the ecosystem.”
Part of Montecillo’s goal is to make syntropic farming go mainstream, but to do this, he needs to be able to prove that it’s economically viable.
Syntropic farming is but one of many regenerative farming systems that take the environment into account. In a capitalist world, ideology isn’t enough. Farming is a business, and the bottom line for many people is still money. Farm productivity has been part of the appeal of syntropic farming. Is it truly possible to reap big harvests while preserving the natural environment? Montecillo seems to think so.
“In our small barangay, we’re the only farm that produces lots of cacao. We’re very happy with that.”