Large scale agriculture as we now know, conjures images of monocropped landscapes and vegetable lives supported by high-tech light and temperature controls. For a long time, agriculture was built on deforestation; nature had to be destroyed to create food.

How can we bring food to our tables without destroying forests and biodiversity that are vital to solving climate change issues?

We need an intensive cropping method that not only creates an abundance of crops but also regenerates biodiversity found in forests. This can be achieved through the practice of Syntropic Agroforestry, a farming system to restore degraded land. This method was developed by Ernst Gotsch, a Swiss botanist, based on studies of plant succession patterns.

I attended an intensive Syntropic Agroforestry workshop in Kuala Lumpur in 2018. From this workshop, here are some sharings of how we can observe nature and work with it, and not antagonize it through large-scale farming.