Ernst Götsch — Syntropic Agriculture
The Swiss-born farmer who regrew a rainforest — and its springs — by farming the way a forest grows.
Ernst Götsch, a Swiss-born researcher who has worked in Brazil since the 1980s, is the originator of syntropic agriculture: succession-driven, densely planted agroforestry that uses no external inputs and heavy pruning to accelerate how a forest builds itself.
On degraded pasture in Bahia he restored more than 200 hectares of Atlantic Forest, and in the process dry springs began to flow again. His plots produce cocoa, fruit, and timber while regenerating the very ecosystem they sit in — farming and reforestation as the same act.