Clemson University’s Associate Professor of Ruminant Nutrition, Dr. Gustavo Lascano, spent some of his childhood in the Amazon basin, where he witnessed a radically different form of agriculture—one that didn’t rely on heavy machinery, chemical inputs, or monocultures. He saw communities practicing agroforestry, where food was produced within living forests.
A prime example of this type of system still in existence today is Ecuador’s chakra system, a traditional Indigenous approach that integrates trees, fruits, vegetables, and medicinal plants into a single ecosystem. It mimics the structure of a natural forest and sustains soil fertility and biodiversity without synthetic inputs (FAO, 2024).
Such systems challenge modern notions of productivity. Long before industrial agriculture, these communities produced enough food to support populations of up to 300,000 people despite no modern inputs. And they did so in harmony with nature—not in opposition to it as many of our more modern practices are.
Bringing lessons from these systems into our modern agricultural systems could begin to be done by:
• Diversifying crop production
• Incorporating perennial plants
• Reintroducing tree cover into farming landscapes
• Bringing animals back into crop production systems
As climate and soil degradation worsen, returning to these rooted, nature-aligned practices may be key to resilient and abundant farming.
To hear more about Dr. Lascano’s experience in these agroforest systems, check out our podcast interview with him here.
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