Cage Match: Syntropic VS…

Hello, all, it has been a minute since I have had the opportunity to regale you with thoughts and facts about agriculture, and in the past few months, my sanity has slipped even further away from me. Luckily, losing my sense of sanity puts me in fantastic company these days, and besides, the absolute absurdity of the current USA agricultural system seems to require a partially un-sane mind to navigate anyway. But before we get into the cause of my brain smoothie (TARIFFS), I would like to do a little comparison with other various types of sustainable/non-conventional agriculture that are currently in use.

One of the difficulties in discussing sustainable agriculture is that many ideas overlap with one another. For instance, two different sustainable methods, i.e. “permaculture” versus “syntropic agriculture” may actually include a lot of the same ideas, thoughts, and practices, but because sustainable agriculture is still very much a developing field, the same concepts get presented very differently. This can make it hard to pinpoint the actual differences and similarities in types of sustainable or non-conventional agricultural systems This guide is meant to compare and contrast syntropic agriculture with three other common “sustainable” agriculture methods: organic, permaculture, and restorative agriculture. These are not the only kinds of sustainable agriculture by any means, but rather a representative sample of the most common kinds of sustainable agriculture.

Syntropic Agriculture Vs. Organic agriculture

These two agricultural systems are vastly different. As Dan Kilrain pointed out in his interview, the word “organic” often had two different meanings for people. There is the “organic” practice of working with the land and nature as had been done pre-conventional agriculture. This lowercase “organic” practice often involves working within the natural earth systems to grow food, as opposed to trying to fight or remove natural systems from agriculture. This idea of a lowercase “organic” practice has no formal rules or guidelines to it, and it’s a pretty nebulous concept. So, I am going to be focusing on the more common kind of organic farming, uppercase Organic farming. This uppercase “Organic” farming is a certification a farmer can receive from the USDA, and has strict rules and regulations for growers to follow before their work can be considered Organic. If you are interested in reading the full rules and regulations for Organic growers in the United States, they can be found here. An important note is that the “Organic” label is often used as shorthand for consumers. It allows consumers to easily tell whether or not the product has been made or harvested with the help of synthetic or inorganic materials. For farmers, however, the rules are much more complex than just the limitation of materials. Since these rules are very long, I am going to boil them down to a few main points:

1. Producers of Organic produce must maintain or improve soil quality. This is a big one for the USDA, and most of their regulations come back to this. The tilling and cultivation practices producers use take this into account, the weeding practices take this into account, the pest management practices take this into account, and the mulching practices take this into account.

2. Organic produce must come from certified Organic seeds. Basically, this means that producers or farmers who are Organic can only get their seeds from a seed supplier that has been previously certified as Organic. This rule can cause problems for small Organic farms, because these suppliers don’t always have the best strains or kind of produce that is ideal, and because it ends up being kind of a chicken and egg situation at times. You need to grow Organic produce to get certified Organic seeds, but without certified Organic seeds, you cannot grow certified Organic produce.

3. Organic farmers and producers must implement some type of crop rotation that, going back to point number one, protects the soil health.

4. Organic farmers cannot use inorganic or synthetic materials on their land for three years before certification, and while their certification is in effect.

There’s also a lot of rules about Organic meat and poultry. That’s not really my purview but I wanted to mention it for the sake of being thorough.

Syntropic

Organic

Okay, so now that we have established a basic understanding of Organic agriculture, it’s time to do my very favorite thing in the world: a Venn diagram.

As you can see from the warm and friendly Venn diagram, the methods overlap in a few important ways. They both make soil health a priority, and they mostly do not depend on pesticides for pest control. The key difference is that an Organic producer is allowed and welcome to produce in a conventional way with one crop per field, and then use field rotation to keep the soil healthy. Because syntropic agriculture is almost the exact opposite of that, I can definitely foresee that a syntropic farm would likely be initially denied an Organic certification from the government, simply because the regulations do require crop rotation practices. Overall, though, these two ideas of more sustainable farming are pretty compatible. There are some substantial differences, but the intended outcomes of both methods are the same. Healthy soil, and healthy food management.

Syntropic Agriculture Vs. Permaculture

Oh boy! From the jump, I can tell you that these two sustainable agriculture methods are fairly similar. Permaculture has been around for a little bit longer, it has more frequency of use in the sustantiable agriculture lexicon, and overall, it’s a pretty well-known method. “Permaculture” comes from a combination of the words “permanent” and “agriculture”. Actually, when I first learned about sustainable agriculture and designed my first rows, it was with help from a permaculture book from the 1980s, so this method does carry a special place in my heart. That being said, it’s basically just a less specific and less long-term way of doing syntropics. I would never say that without backing it up, so let’s get into it.

The permaculture method exists less as a set of explanations for how to grow food well, and more as a set of ethical principles and design principles. Bill Mollison, the founder, for lack of a better word, has since said that permaculture is “a design of systems with which we can live.”[1] Mollison views the idea of permaculture less as a farming style and more as a life philosophy. This is wonderful, but not an overwhelming helpful way of teaching others the practical skills it takes to practice permaculture. As a result of this ambiguity, David Holmgren expanded on this idea of design to come up with 12 ethics of permaculture. All of these rules do follow from Mollison’s initial conception of permaculture and they act as a more particle guide to implementing permaculture. Holmgren’s 12 rules are as follows[2]:

1. Observe and interact

Use careful observation and interaction to copy natural systems

2. Catch and store energy

Take advantage of surplus energy and resource when possible

3. Obtain a yield

Aim for rewards that encourage growth and implementation of the system

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

Be careful not to overextend resources, and plant with a mind for the future

5. Use and value renewable resources and services

Use renewable sources whenever possible

6. Produce no waste

Instead of recycling or reusing, strive to use waste-free methods so there is nothing to recycle or reuse in the first place

7. Design from patterns to details

Start with a big idea, and then slowly clarify as you refine the design

8. Integrate rather than separate

Aim to create an integrated plant system where each plant contributes to the health of other plants

9. Use small and slow solutions

The “quick fix” often has hidden consequences; the slow way is often more effective. Ex: A mechanical weed puller may be faster, but more likely to miss weeds that choke out plants later

10. Use and value diversity

Plant a lot of different plant species

11. Use edges and value the marginal

Don’t neglect the edges of a permaculture system, instead use them to grow plants that naturally grow there

12. Creatively use and respond to change

Don’t get locked into doing things a certain way, instead remain flexible and look for growth opportunities.

If these don’t seem too specific, it’s because they’re not. Holmgren expands on each of these ideas to explain the philosophies behind them, but he also doesn’t include any specific instructions as syntropic teachings would. Others on the internet have used these 12 guidelines to promote permaculture to others, but sadly these websites also do not include additional instruction.[3][4][5]

Again, these are the guidelines that Holmgren came up with based on Mollison’s general philosophy. Mollison himself would explain permaculture as a system of design principles that allow you to reconnect with and take back your own food supply. Think about Mollison’s vison of permaculture as a backyard garden designed to use and save every bit of water possible. Mollison has a thing about big agriculture, he actually thinks it should be banned[6], so this rigidity to conventional systems tends to be reflected in his work. As a result, the guiding principles he laid out focus much more on general advice rather than specific instruction. His later informational talks and pamphlets did include more direct instructions, broken up by the type of land one was looking to farm.[7] For example, if one is planning to build a backyard garden on a steep slope, Mollison would recommend terraces or steps be carved into the slope, in order to save as much rainwater as possible. All his advice is an application of the general principles he puts forth, and much of it is based on conserving rain. If you’re interested, you can read more of that advice here.

Mollison’s guidelines to permaculture are simple: Care for the earth, and care for the people. Within that simple statement is a whole host of implications. Caring for the earth requires working with nature to use and utilize current systems-many of Mollison’s designs use recycled or recollected rainwater. Mollison also advocates for closed loop systems, which basically means no added nutrients or fertilizers should be used.[8] This is the same as syntropic agriculture, which also uses no additional fertilizers or nutrients, it is just presented and framed in a different way. As can be seen in the Venn diagram below, many of the ideas of permaculture and syntropic agriculture overlap, and the main difference between the two systems is scalability and presentation.

Permaculture and syntropic agriculture are compatible with each other, and I can easily see how a permaculture garden could fulfill syntropic requirements, and almost every syntropic farm would fulfill the permaculture ideal. Outside of potential scale, which is one of the main differences between the two systems, I like to think about permaculture and syntropic agriculture as squares and rectangles. Just as every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square, every true syntropic farm is a permaculture, but not every permaculture is syntropic in nature.

Syntropic Agriculture Vs. Regenerative/Restorative Agriculture

Regenerative/restorative agriculture (or RR aggy, as I have affectionately nicknamed it) has a few different definitions, depending on where you look. It is usually an umbrella term or industry shorthand for management practices that focus on carbon sequestration within the soil. Sometimes “carbon farming”, or the growing of plants specifically to capture carbon, is also included under the banner of RR aggy, but again, it depends on whom in the industry you ask (or what blog you read!). Looking at how the term RR aggy is used in the scientific community, it seems clear that the term does not have a consistent definition.[9]A recent publication in 2020 proposed the following definition for RR aggy as

“an approach to farming that uses soil conservation as the entry point to regenerate and contribute to multiple provisioning, regulating and supporting services, with the objective that this will enhance not only the environmental, but also the social and economic dimensions of sustainable food production.”[10]

Woah. That’s quite a mouthful, but what it boils down to is this: people who practice RR aggy look at agriculture from SOIL perspective. By thinking about what most benefits the soil, RR aggy growers believe that other problems with conventional agriculture would also be solved. As far as I can tell, one of the primary goals of RR aggy is to solve the many problems of conventional agriculture, but this is expected to occur naturally after only focusing on soil health. The objective of a RR aggy grower would also be healthy soil, and through the achievement of that objective, the other problems would cease. The diminishment of other agriculture problems is a goal, but one that a RR aggy grower would be indirectly working towards.

Now, as to what practices are used in RR aggy style, it really runs the gambit. Basically, anything that helps the soil could be considered a RR aggy practice, included mulching, no-till, crop rotation, and many other methods. Even permaculture has been mentioned as a RR aggy method.[11] This lack of consensus from the agriculture and scientific community about what RR aggy actually is has led to uncertainty about how best to implement or incorporate RR aggy into conventional agriculture systems.[12]

Although there are clear differences in RR aggy and syntropic agriculture, they are not incompatible visions of sustainable agriculture. RR aggy has a more restrictive way of viewing the health of a system, as they only focus on soil, while syntropic agriculture has a gestalt view of farming. This difference does not make them incompatible, in fact, a RR aggy grower would most likely embrace syntropic agriculture because of the positive impact it has on soils. Overall, I would say that the differences between RR aggy and syntropic agriculture are a cause of the difference of focus — RR aggy focuses on soil, and syntropic agriculture focuses on the system as a whole.

Sustainable agriculture is a large field with a lot of vaguely defined terms. It is challenging to get a consistent definition without literature reviews and analysis by researchers in the field, and too often this confusion leads to problems with implementation. I hope that for you, this mini guide to different kinds of sustainable agriculture was helpful.

With a deep wish for a stable sustainable lexicon,

Ajah

[1] Mollison, Bill, and David Holmgren. Permaculture. Lesmurdie Progress Association, 1978.

[2] Holmgren, David. Essence of permaculture. Melliodora Publishing, 2020.

[3] Barth, Brian. “Permaculture: You’ve Heard of it, but what the Heck is it?” Modern Farmer., last modified April 19, accessed March 2, 2021, https://modernfarmer.com/2016/04/permaculture/.

[4] Telford, Richard and Holmgren, David. “Permaculture Design Principles.” Permaculture Principles., accessed March 2, 2021, https://permacultureprinciples.com/principles/.

[5] Waddingon, Elizabeth. “The 12 Principles of Permaculture: A Way Forward.” Ethical., last modified April 23, https://ethical.net/ethical/permaculture-principles/.

[6] Mollison, Bill, and David Holmgren. Permaculture. Lesmurdie Progress Association, 1978.

[7] Mollison, Bill, Reny Mia Slay, Jean-Luc Girard, and Jean-Luc Girard. Introduction to permaculture. Tyalgum,, Australia: Tagari Publications, 1991.

[8] Mollison, Bill. “Permaculture: a designer’s manual.” Permaculture: a designer’s manual. (1988).

[9] Schreefel, Loekie, R. P. O. Schulte, I. J. M. de Boer, A. Pas Schrijver, and H. H. E. van Zanten. “Regenerative agriculture–the soil is the base.” Global Food Security 26 (2020): 100404.

[10] Schreefel, Loekie, R. P. O. Schulte, I. J. M. de Boer, A. Pas Schrijver, and H. H. E. van Zanten. “Regenerative agriculture–the soil is the base.” Global Food Security 26 (2020): 100404.

[11] Shepard, Mark. Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers Acers U.S.A, 2014.

[12] Schreefel, Loekie, R. P. O. Schulte, I. J. M. de Boer, A. Pas Schrijver, and H. H. E. van Zanten. “Regenerative agriculture–the soil is the base.” Global Food Security 26 (2020): 100404.