When a Farm Is a Forest

LISTENING: to the people around me speak in Portuguese, a language I don't understand
FEELING: hot and sweaty
SEEING: the coral paint of a cheap hotel wall chip away

I've been writing this in pieces — in the car, in the jungle, in the hotel. I'm in Brazil. It's my first time here. I've written so many stories about this place, but I've never set foot on this land. It's wild to think that, despite what I do know, there's an endless amount I don't.

You can't really know a place until you've been there: until you see how the sun rises, until you hear the music blast from their speakers, until you taste its food. I'm in Irituia, a community in the northern part of Brazil, not far from the Atlantic and surrounded by the lifeways of the Amazon: its rivers.

Here, the locals are used to seeing toucans and Amazon river dolphins. I have yet to see either. I have seen monkeys (no idea what species, unfortunately), parrots (also no idea of the species), and the many stray dogs and cats I instantly fall in love with upon a tail wag or a meow.

Anyway, I'm here to learn about the land. Literally. I'm meeting with traditional farmers in Pará, a Brazilian state I've written about after a massacre and a landless farmer was killed. Today, I'm writing about farmers again — but ones who are learning the mechanics of agroforestry. Do you know the word? The magic behind the practice?

Agroforestry is about the possibilities born when you feed a people and re-grow a forest all at once.

Welcome to Possibilities, a creative climate newsletter on the possibilities that lie where crisis meets community. I’m Yessenia Funes, a stranger to this land.

I'm learning  about how cotton is grown through agroforestry. The farmers here — many of whom are from traditional communities whose ancestries are a blend of formerly enslaved people, Indigenous people, and colonizing people — are growing cotton next to crops like acai and banana and yucca. The plants all work together. Some are on the plot to provide nutrients. Others, to provide shade.

As news is out that deforestation in the Amazon is down by 60 percent compared to last year, I can't help but wonder about the role agroforestry plays.

The families are selling their organic cotton to VEJA, a sneaker company that is attempting to build a new system for fashion supply chains. The company is working with FarFarm, a strategy-based agricultural operation that is investing in Brazilian small-shareholder farmers who want to feed their families and regrow the forest.

Instead of burning the forest, they are regenerating it.

They don't use chemicals that sicken the land and the workers. They rely on the plants themselves to help one another. There are no weeds — only biomass. Ants aren't pests — they are an indicator that what they're growing is sweet and lush.

I spoke with Alexandre Caique Costa e Silva, one of FarFarm's lead trainers and agroforestry experts, to let him define agroforestry — and what this form of agriculture can mean for the land and its people.

The interview is only for paid subscribers, so be sure to upgrade your membership if you want to hear the wisdom Caique has to share.

How would you define agroforestry?
It's a complex organism. The same way that the universe and microscopic organisms are their own complex organisms, agroforestry is, too. It's a way to reconnect with nature like we used to be 10,000 years ago when we invented agriculture.

The simplest way to explain agroforestry is that it integrates trees with seasonal crops. You can design it to have a lot of species or just a few — but you're always integrating trees with seasonal crops.

What is the role of agroforestry in protecting the land and nature?
The most important thing is to plant forests: forests that produce food and that reconnect people with nature again. Many people even here in the Amazon are disconnected from nature.

What is your relationship to the forest?
I am from the semi-arid region of Brazil all the way to the East far from the forest. When I began to do projects here, the hardest part was learning to identify the species and trees.

As a kid, I was really interested in technology and computers even though I didn't have that much access to them. I was born in a rural area where I was raised by my grandparents who planted simple seasonal crops like yucca and corn. I was passionate about these areas, too. I thought about living in the city, but I didn't know what to do there. I wanted to figure out how I can do more while still living a rural life.

Then, I began to study agroecology. It's such a complex system that that fascination and passion I had hoped to find in technology, I found instead in agroforestry. Just like in technology, everything is interconnected and works systematically in agroforestry.  

I kept studying after I took an agroforestry class. Everything changed so fast. I loved to travel, but I couldn't afford it before. Through my agroforestry work with FarFarm, I can't even count how many states I've been to in Brazil and how many trips I've done.

The projects always connect back to smallholder farmers, which makes sense to me. People always ask me why I don't grow my own plot of land, but my dream is to be able to plant as many agroforests as possible and meet as many farmers as possible even though I know I may not see them again once I help them set up their farms.

I want to support and empower other people to implement agroforestry.

How did you learn about agroforestry?
I was researching about agroecology, which is more about social issues and the landless movement in Brazil. I liked it, but while watching YouTube videos, I learned about agroforestry. It included the socioeconomic values of agroecology but still left a lot of opportunities for scientific innovation. I could figure out new designs and systems for how to grow a forest.

Agroforestry has endless possibilities.

At FarFarm, we do agroecological agroforestry. It's environmental with the trees, but it also brings in the social, economic, and cultural issues like in agroecology. When you see a plant, it may be medicine. When you see a tree, it might remind you of music. The cultural aspect is incorporated in agroecological agroforestry.

It's better than the term "regenerative agriculture," which is becoming more and more like "sustainability." It's greenwashed now. Something may be "sustainable" by one measure but damaging or polluting by another. "Regenerative agriculture" is becoming the same.

With agroecological agforestry, we can ensure it's truly regenerative.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. It was conducted in Portuguese with the help of a translator.

Rest in Power

While we can't say for certain that climate change led to these specific weather events (we need attribution studies for that), we do know that the Earth's rising temperatures are already creating more disasters like these.

Floods in Nova Scotia, Canada, have killed at least four, including a 6-year-old.

Record-breaking rains in Beijing have left at least 20 dead. Typhoon Doksuri is to blame. At least one person is dead in Japan, too. In the Philippines, at least 13.

Heat is also killing people in this region: 12 in South Korea and three in Japan. In the Southwest and Mexico, high temperatures continue to do the same.

Currently Reading

This story I wrote for Patagonia is a letter to my future child — the one I used to be scared to have. I've been working on it for months, so please enjoy and share.

You all should read everything Dharna Noor writes for The Guardian. Especially this one.

Appreciated this Vanity Fair piece on Angus Cloud, the beloved 'Euphoria' actor who died this week at 25. Celebrity deaths don't usually rattle me, but his star was only just rising. We lost him too soon.

Sorry there's not more — I barely have internet access out here!

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See you next week. xx

- Yessenia