[Sdpg] Polycultures in the Brazilian drylands: A new version of an old tradition by Marsha Hanzi

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

hi everyone
    Recently we had a visit in our region by Marsha Hanzi Permaculture 
Teacher and Activist from Brazil , below is an article by her about her 
work in Brazil, we will post more later about how we can help and when her 
center will be open to interns and courses in the future,  also working on 
an interview for Permaculture Talkstory in Hopedance Magazine and Santa 
Barbara Permaculture website too
                 wes

ALN No. 48: Hanzi: Polycultures in the Brazilian drylands
... Author information. (Back to top) Marsha Hanzi is the founder of the
Bahian Permaculture Institute. She works with a multi-disciplinary ...
ag.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln48/hanzi.html - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

Polycultures in the Brazilian drylands: A new version of an old tradition

by Marsha Hanzi

"[The polyculture model tested in]this project is financed by the local 
castor bean industry, which was interested in having a steadier supply of 
raw materials. These first demonstration fields have given spectacular 
results: one farmer harvested the equivalent of 1,400 Reais (about 700 
dollars) from one hectare alone. This is about double the regional average 
income per hectare..."
The drylands of Brazil
The Drylands Polyculture Project
Author information
Additional web resources
The drylands of Brazil

(Back to top)
Although Brazil is best known for its vast rainforests, it is also home to 
an immense semi-arid region (900,000 square kilometers and growing!). 
Located in the Northeast of the country, this region, the Sertão, is 
composed of hundreds of micro-climates and specific ecosystems, rich in 
fauna and flora. It is also densely populated (10 million inhabitants) and 
highly degraded. The landholdings are a mixture of many smallholdings (5-30 
hectares) and large cattle ranches, often owned by absentee owners. The 
local people are a mixture of original indigenous inhabitants with 
Portuguese, with a strong oral tradition that many were actually Jewish 
refugees fleeing from the Inquisition (hiding their identity by changing 
their names). Although the Indian tradition is virtually extinct in the 
region, the form of agriculture practiced until today by many smallholders 
is the traditional (and extremely destructive) slash-and-burn.

A recent survey estimated that 40% of this region is degraded with 25% in 
danger of desertification, but this estimate is based on meager evidence, 
at best. The fact is that with the arrival of "modern" farming and 
cattle-raising, this region has suffered intensive removal of the native 
vegetation, called Caatinga, exposing the shallow and fragile soils to hot 
constant winds and sheet erosion. The traditional farmers planted small 
(half-hectare) plots in the heart of the native vegetation, thus 
maintaining biodiversity and natural windbreaks. When the short rainy 
season was over, the rest of the year was spent hunting the local fauna. 
With the advent of tractors, however, these plots grew to 2-3 hectares or 
more, exposing the land, and virtually eliminating the Caatinga. With the 
arrival of commercial farming, some 20 years ago, when many farmers began 
to plant for money instead of for subsistence, the bank credit system 
demanded that these plots be planted with monocultures and maintained with 
commercially produced chemicals. This had the effect of drying the land 
even more (and dragging many would-be "modern" farmers to bankruptcy, since 
this model is much more expensive than the traditional one). Although the 
yearly precipitation averages continue to be more or less the same as 
historic values, there are now perceptible changes in the climate: the 
rains are coming ever more violently and unpredictably and the period of 
droughts is becoming longer and hotter.

The Sertão now depends on a totally unsustainable form of agriculture, 
based on corn and beans, which only produce well two years in five, or 
less. To compensate for the bad years, the farmers run cattle and goats and 
hunt native fauna, with which the remaining Caatinga is blessed. 
Unfortunately, in most regions, due to overstocking, this has affected the 
local ecosystem to a point where it is having difficulty regenerating even 
in rainy years, creating a downward spiral into desertification. Together 
with the growing climate instability, this situation has provoked social 
and economic instability, forcing millions of these dryland inhabitants to 
migrate into the urban centers. This migration is a major cause of the 
violent slums for which Brazil is famous.
The Drylands Polyculture Project

(Back to top)
It was in this dramatic scenario that the Drylands Polyculture Project was 
born. It was observed that despite its apparently barren prospects, the 
Sertão is a rich and prosperous land, producing many local and adapted 
crops and fodder plants. The problem was not the climate-as is usually 
implied-but the agricultural model, based on slash-and-burn, or worse, 
European practices of cleancropping and tilling, totally inappropriate for 
local conditions. In the old days, the small fields were never left bare, 
being a rich and dense mish-mash of short-, middle- and long-term crops of 
varying heights (corn, beans, tree cotton, castor bean, pumpkins, native 
cucumbers, cowpeas, sesame, sunflowers, peanuts, cassava; some of these 
crops reached tree height). Thus the overall destructive effects of the 
slash-and-burn were limited to small areas, and compensated for by this 
mixture of crops.

The Polyculture Model is, in part, an adaptation of the old model which in 
itself is an imitation of the local ecosystem, including the factors of 
density, biodiversity, and dynamism. As in the local ecosystem, there is a 
variety of legume trees to help fix nitrogen, considerable organic mass 
when the rains come, and woody ground cover (from tree prunings) during 
drought, protecting the land long after other organic material has 
decomposed. This guarantees permanent root masses which capture any drop of 
rain, and leaf surface to capture the dew that is an important source of 
humidity in this climate. These systems have demonstrated beyond a doubt 
that where there is vegetation there is water, and not the contrary-the 
denser the systems have been planted, the more humid they have remained, 
long into the dry season.

Using this local model of biodiversity, density, and dynamism, various 
combinations were implemented which contained the following elements: 
drought-hardy forage plants which guarantee some production even in El Niño 
years (such as Opuntia cactus); leguminous trees, some native, some 
adapted, such as Gliricidia and Leucaena; plants to fix nitrogen and 
produce biomass in general (jack beans (Canavalia) and pigeon pea (Cajanus 
cajan ), and the above-mentioned leguminous trees); short-term catch crops 
(radishes, sesame) planted in furrows with a bit of compost or manure, and 
legume trees to replace them; castor bean (the main cash crop, resistant to 
drought); rows of corn; and cowpeas filling in the rest of the space. 
Ideally , there needs to be one plant every ten centimeters, especially in 
poor soils where the plants do not fill out well and/or during the first 
year. Cassava can also be included in this scheme, replacing one of the 
corn rows. Cane grass could be an important element because it is an 
excellent mulch grass when properly managed, but has not been included 
because the farmers fear its potential invasiveness and do not want to 
plant it.

[thumbnail of planting diagram]
Thumbnail link to planting diagram and picture of typical field, ~8K file

The fields are planted with cactus just before the rains come, four meters 
between rows, one meter between plants. This effectively marks the field 
(which can become quite complex!) so that the farmer can orient the rest of 
the crops properly. Normally, in the same row as the cactus, castor bean is 
planted in the dry soil, when the first signs of approaching rain appear 
(native cactus flowering, etc.) When the rains come, seeds of fruits, 
legumes, and fine hardwoods are planted together with the cactus, for the 
future agroforest, and sesame is interplanted with the castor bean, since 
the geometry of the two plants (castor bean round, sesame tall and 
straight) combines well and efficiently uses the space. The four meters 
between the castor bean rows are densely planted with food and legume 
crops, interspersed with leguminous trees that will shade and protect the 
space in the dry season.

[thumbnail image of polyculture field, northeastern Brazil]
Thumbnail link to picture of young polyculture field, ~48K file

The second year, when the rains are due again, the process is repeated, 
this time pruning the leguminous trees and any other plant (castor bean, 
pigeon pea) which survived the dry season and using the prunings as mulch 
to protect the soil. As a result, the soil is gradually built up, improving 
in fertility over the years.

Thus, from the same field, year after year, the farmer will harvest some 
vegetables, corn, beans and cowpeas, sesame, pigeon pea, and (as the trees 
mature) fruits for his table, while having castor bean for sale and fodder 
for his animals (taking care not to rob the field of its biomass! Any 
fodder harvested must be returned in the form of manure). In the worst 
years he may harvest mostly fodder plants, but this will guarantee that he 
will always have meat and milk to eat and income from the sale of the 
animals to buy other food, thus avoiding total collapse of the system. We 
believe that with this system even in the worst years he should also have 
some castor bean crop, giving enough income to get through the bad times 
and not have to migrate.

A second phase of this project will be the conservation of food for the dry 
season, especially hay for the animals and dried leaf meal for the humans. 
(This dried meal, produced from leaves of crops such as cowpeas, pigeon 
peas and cassava, is added to such foods as bean dishes and soups. Besides 
being tasty, it helps counter vitamin A deficiencies, which are common on 
the region.) Of course the family will also need ample cisterns to 
guarantee drinking water for the family and animals, an aspect which is 
being intensely addressed by local NGOs.

These polycultures are so healthy that absolutely no form of artificially 
produced chemical is necessary to maintain them. They have proved to be 
resistant to insects and other diseases, even when growing side-by-side 
with infected fields. The biomass and presence of legumes eliminate need 
for manures, which become an element of luxury, used, when available, to 
increase the production of the short-term crops.

[thumbnail link to castor bean chart]
Thumbnail link to chart of castor bean contribution to Brazilian GNP, ~9K file

This polyculture model, as developed by Ernst Gotsch, a Swiss 
farmer/researcher who has been developing agroforest models for Brazil for 
the last 15 years, is more than ten years old. However, the project of 
large-scale planting of demonstration fields only began this year. The 
project is financed by the local castor bean industry, which was interested 
in having a steadier supply of raw materials. These first demonstration 
fields have given spectacular results: one farmer harvested the equivalent 
of 1,400 Reais (about 700 dollars) from one hectare alone. This is about 
double the regional average income per hectare and compares very favorably 
to the state's minimum salary of 150 Reais per month or 1,800 Reais per 
year. Furthermore, this sum does not include the armfuls of corn and 
pumpkins that the farmer gave to his many curious visitors, and the food he 
harvested for his own table during this first season. He is so happy with 
the results that he plans to plant 10 hectares in the model next season. 
Thirty of his neighbors are also planning to try out the model. Not all the 
demonstration plots gave such spectacular yields, sometimes due to the 
severely degraded soils, sometimes due to the farmer not implementing the 
model as designed (they find it hard to believe that they can plant so 
densely and still harvest something!) But ALL plots produced significantly 
better than the conventional plots, and all promise to weather over this 
first dry season with some vegetative cover. This means that the soil is 
being protected and improved, promising better results for the coming year.

The success of these field runs has caught the attention of the state 
agriculture department and the local extension service, and even of one 
local bank, which is considering changing policy to demand the polyculture 
model as a condition for financing. When the next rains come, there are 
plans to plant 300 demonstration plots, with the direct involvement of the 
extension agents who then will be responsible for spreading the model even 
further.

With this simple yet powerful technique, we hope, in the space of a few 
years, to substantially lessen the tide of land degradation and mass 
migration from the Brazilian drylands, thus helping to rescue this rich 
area from social and economic collapse.

[bar denoting end of article text]
Author information

(Back to top)
Marsha Hanzi is the founder of the Bahian Permaculture Institute. She works 
with a multi-disciplinary team in helping farmers and new communities 
develop sustainable systems. In existence since 1992, the Institute has 
been responsible for training numerous professionals in agroforest 
techniques and sustainable design. They offer traineeships to students from 
around the world. The Institute will also host the Second Latinamerican 
Permaculture Congress at the end September 2001 in the Chapada Diamantina 
Mountains of Bahia.

Those interested can get in touch with her by email at hanzibra at svn.com.br
Web site (in Portuguese): http://www.geocities.com/ipbbr
Additional web resources:

(Back to top)
Special: Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture
http://www.fao.org/sd/epdirect/epre0039.htm
 From the FAO's Sustainable Development database, this online document is 
extracted from "Human Nature: Agricultural Biodiversity and Farm-based Food 
Security" by Hope Shand, an independent study prepared by the Rural 
Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) for the Food and Agriculture 
Organization of the United Nations (December 1997).

Cultivating Diversity: Agrobiodiversity and Food Security
http://www.undp.org/seed/food/pages/publications/4.2/culdivagro.pdf
This 1998 report, prepared by the World Resources Institute and available 
from the United Nations Development Programme web site, summarizes the 
importance of agrobiodiversity to food security, productivity, and 
ecological sustainability. It proposes guidelines to help meet the 
worldwide need for food while safeguarding opportunities for farmers and 
their communities. NB: this is a large document!

About the Arid Lands Newsletter
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