Description

In one of the driest, most degraded landscapes in Europe, farmer and agroforester Antonio Coelho has built 60 cm of fertile topsoil, raised organic matter to 7.4%, and slashed irrigation by 85% - all in just six years!

In this #REWIND episode, Antonio shares his deeply inspiring journey into entropic agroforestry, a form of regenerative agriculture that mimics forest ecosystems to grow food, restore land, and rebuild water cycles. He explains how complex, layered polycultures can outcompete monocultures - not just ecologically, but economically too - if we shift how we define productivity.

You’ll learn:

• Why dense, multi-species systems don’t compete — they cooperate

• How to retain water and thrive even with 8-month droughts

• What it means to feed the soil first, not just the crop

• Why economic models must account for real planetary costs

• How biomass, pruning, and photosynthesis create energy loops that regenerate land over time

This episode challenges conventional logic about competition, inputs, and profitability — and offers a bold, hopeful vision for the future of farming.

🎧 Tune in now and see why this is Deep Seed’s most-watched episode on YouTube yet. To see Antonio’s farm and the system in action, head to our YouTube channel for the full visual experience.

If you enjoy this episode, leave a rating or share it with someone who still thinks farming in the desert is impossible ❤️

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This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital - www.soilcapital.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Centropic farming, it's a way of farming, but I think the major difference in between other farming approach, it's we try to simulate what the forest ecosystem does and replicate it in a food production mode. So we try to, as best as we can, to add the concept of succession and also the layer concept. on the food production, using mainly, because we are a natural park, mainly native species.

• Speaker #1

  Hi everyone and welcome back to the Deep Seed Podcast. Earlier this year in May, I had the pleasure to visit a very special place called Terra Centropica, located in the south of Portugal. My guest for this episode is Antonio Coelho. I'm not 100% sure I'm pronouncing this right, but I hope I am. And he has been practicing syntropic agroforestry here for a number of years, and the numbers are just astonishing. In one of the harshest and driest places in the whole of Europe, with some of the most degraded soils, he's built over 60 centimeters of soil and brought the organic matter levels of that soil up to 7.4%. in only six years. And that's not all. They've achieved that while reducing their input needs drastically. For example, reducing irrigation by 85%. I don't even have the words to describe how incredible those numbers are. They go way beyond what experts and scientists thought was even possible. This is literally pushing the boundaries of what a food production agricultural system is actually capable of. And This is possibly the most hopeful piece of information that I've heard all year long, because it tells me that when the current globalized, linear and super extractive food system eventually falls apart, well, we have these incredible solutions to fall back onto when we have the capacity to rebuild our food system very fast, based on the principles of syntropic farming, of regenerative agriculture and agroecology. This episode was originally created in a video format for YouTube and it's actually my most popular episode yet with more than 30 000 views on YouTube. I definitely recommend heading there to watch the full episode otherwise if that's not available to you right now stay here and I've selected a few key passages that are really well adapted and really easy to follow in audio format right here on your favorite streaming platform. This episode was made in partnership with soil capital I'm your host Raphael and this is the Deep Seat Podcast.

• Speaker #0

  So why choose to go in that direction of complexifying systems,

• Speaker #1

  of going for this syntropic kind of system rather than doing what most people do which is simplified monoculture efficient systems?

• Speaker #0

  When I first started in 2008 on this farm, we used to grow herbs mainly for exporting for northern countries of Europe. And this model was completely based on, although I was organic, in a more conventional organic mode, which it states we were based on a black plastic cover on the soil and we used to plant all these herbs. on top of these plastic beds or raised beds as we call them and I was organic so what I felt at the time it first of all it was wrong because when you have temperatures on summertime that reach easily 40 or 45 it means that if you are using a synthetic mulch cover you are killing all the life on the soil. And I start completely, almost straight away, feeling this pressure of not treating the soil well. So a lot of death rates, a lot of problems on the plants, plagues, diseases, and so on and so on. And the demanding on water irrigation. was huge. So the pressure of irrigation all the time, it was constantly there. And with this system it's completely different. You work... with life. You work with the soil. You give your focus. It's not the production. Well, obviously, in the end of the day, you need to produce. But your main focus is the soil. When you treat the soil well, with a lot of organic matter, a lot of mounching material, chop and drop, all this that we chop and drop stays on the top of the soil surface. And you start decreasing your irrigation. needs completely it's completely i can tell you that i used to irrigate twice a day before nowadays even on the summertime i irrigate much less we do irrigate more or less twice a week so it's a huge difference in terms of quantity of water needed for uh fulfill the needs of the plants yeah yeah okay it's it's completely different so this is why The principal reason that we do this type of farming here, it's because also the difficulties of the landscape. Mertula is well known for very tough summers, very concentrated rainfall during certain periods. And I can tell you that I already experienced at least four droughts in Mertula, tough droughts. The period without any rain, it can be eight months. And still, I will manage to produce without irrigating that much because we look at the soil and we keep them as covered as possible. And that's why I think, answering your question, it's one of the main reasons why we do it in this way and not another way.

• Speaker #1

  If I understand correctly, in a sort of conventional system, It's a very linear system where we bring in energy from outside in the form of water, of nutrients, of compost, of fertilizer, everything. So all of that is energy basically that we bring into the system. And then we harvest it out and we take it out of the system. It's very linear. And what you're trying to do is to keep… It's the opposite.

• Speaker #0

  It's to circulate or try to recycle your energy as much as possible without bringing in… a lot of energy okay so to really try to be as circular as possible with energy and nutrients and everything that's on the market so normally what happens in a in conventional and other types of farming there is a lot of energy coming manure plants seeds and everything so we try as best as possible to do it insight obviously when you are in this stage of the gradation you need to on the beginning to bring inputs but afterwards your system starts to balance in a way that you don't need those inputs that much you probably need some from time to time but not as much because you because all the materials that we cut down stays on the soil so you decrease completely the needs of bringing inputs because of this the life on the soil They recycle everything that you put on top of it. So they decompose and mainly they transform all this carbon into food.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Since we're on the topic of energy, a big source of energy is the sun, right? I suppose that it's also something you're trying to do with this kind of system, with different layers,

• Speaker #0

  is to maximize photosynthesis. It's to maximize the system's ability to capture sun energy and to feed it to the system, right? Yes, so that's what the different layers do. So the way that we mount everything, it's in order to capture the sunlight as much as possible. And with that, because photosynthesis is energy, it's energy disposed to all your ecosystem. So everything benefits. The biomasters, they... are here for be pruned. So they enter on this loop of pruning constantly. We mainly prune these biomass trees around three to four times per year. And you see this loop of growth. When they grow, when they shoot back, they consume energy and release energy through the others, through the pruning. So it means that as they are pruned, they decompose sugars on the soil and mainly feed the life on the soil.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. Okay, yeah,

• Speaker #0

  I understand. With that, we have more energy being decomposed and released by the sugars and by the micro-life of the soil, and it's mainly our food for our system.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. So your trees are growing. The bigger they're growing, the more foliage they have, the more biomass you produce, the more photosynthesis is happening. Some of that carbon captured by the plant is released into the soil, through the roots, to the microbiome. So it's already feeding the system. And some of it will be used to grow the tree, the branches, the leaves, the fruits, everything. And so when you're pruning and you're cutting those branches and leaves and then putting them on the ground, that's... all of that energy, that carbon that is stored there, that decomposes, feeds the microbiome, and is fed into the system as well. Yes,

• Speaker #0

  and also the pruning also allows you to keep the plants on the right strata all the time, because you don't want them to start covering the light that others need, so you need to prune them. So you need to conform them in a way that everything is more or less... with their needs fulfilled. Okay.

• Speaker #1

  Just a quick post to tell you about the official partner of the Deep Seed podcast, and that's Soil Capital. Soil Capital is a company that accelerates the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve the health of their soils. They are an incredible company. I love what they're doing, and I'm super proud to be partnering with them for the Deep Seed podcast.

• Speaker #0

  Something I find really interesting is that the what most people think and me myself included until recently is that if you have a lot of density of planting of different trees of shrubs of you will have competition between those plants for the resources for the water for the nutrients but in in this case you're kind of proving that it's the opposite i think we are teached on this way about competition since we are As soon as we entered to the primary school, I don't see any competition. This is our mindset. Even if you consider the way that most of orchards are designed nowadays, they are completely dispersed apart, which in my view, it's not a very nice way to design them because they are more dependent. on inputs, inputs in all terms, nutrition and water inputs.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, if you combine all the right species in a succession mode and also in a strata layer position, well designed, you can see that as much as photosynths that they produce, the better for your system and better for you, better for your production. so for me having plants 30 centimeters of sides from each other, it's not a competition. It's how nature works. And if you go into a more complex ecosystem, a more balanced ecosystem, you can see that happening in nature.

• Speaker #1

  One big question that a lot of people ask about this kind of systems is, can you make money with it? Can you be profitable? Because you see all of these super intensive monocrop... systems, using trees here in Portugal. We had a big conversation about that in a recent episode. And they're very profitable because they're super efficient. In comparison to that, we have the impression or the message that is out there is that with syntropic systems like this one, they are amazing in terms of being more circular, of being ecological, of being great for biodiversity, for water, for soil, for all of these ecosystemic benefits. But economically hard to make it work. Is that the case for you?

• Speaker #0

  We need to understand that this concept of economics is wrong. We just see the money side of it. We are not counting with the degradation that is implicit there, the water scarcity that is creating, the social problems that is creating. We removed all these variables from this equation. to consider that this model is more economical, viable than the others.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  I think we need to be a little bit more realistic and enter different variables just in order to understand what is the most available ecosystem to work with. Okay. I would say, but this is a comparison obviously, and that this ecosystem is more productive in all ways than... others.

• Speaker #1

  So that was it for today's Rewind episode. Once again, if you found this interesting and you want to learn more, I definitely recommend heading to YouTube to watch the full video episode. It's also nice to watch it in video because then you can see Antonio and you can see his farm and farming system as well. If like me, you find... syntropic agroforestry fascinating and you would like me to do more episodes about it please let me know in the comments of this episode or on social media i always try to reply to every message and to every comment because this is really important for me i spend a lot of time alone at home editing these episodes and sometimes all i get back as a feedback is just a number on the screen how many people have listened to this episode and I miss and I lack sometimes the human connection. So don't hesitate to get in touch. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, of your week and a beautiful life. See you soon.