“There’s no feeling like seeing stuff green and alive and fruit starting to form.” – Karim Kouddous
Setting up a syntropic farm is like software development, Kareem ascertains while showing us the irrigation system. You have complex systems that interact, parts of the system are developed in sprints, you have to test and see how they integrate with others, iterate, make mistakes, carefully consider your inputs and outputs, consider all users. Users like the people living around the 4 hectare farm in Mazunte, Oaxaca province of Mexico. Users like customers, providers, the farm hands, as well as the chicken, worms, mycelium, and the water buffalos who are to arrive the week after we leave.
For software development, as well as any startup, a strong team is the key to success. The team must always come first. Without collaboration, nothing can be achieved. We feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to join the team for a few days. Kareem kindly allows our family of four to volunteer on his land, where we assist with tasks such as carbon measurements, feeding, and catching escaped chickens. We also meet with his team members, including Martin, the general manager, and Yahmick, the farm manager, as well as the hands-on workers who bring real-world expertise. Having some theoretical knowledge, we are eager to learn from their practical experiences.
But Kareem Kouddous took the initiative. He was born in Egypt and moved to New York at age 21 to work as a software developer. And successfully so: he co-founded a company which was sold to Airbnb, worked there for some years, relaunched the original business as a non-profit and used the proceeds to start his farm in Mazunte. What does his company do? It helps people with mental issues get immediate support. It detects suicidal tendencies and connects to people who can help. It literally saves lives.
And so does his farm, we experience. Farm life is a lot of labour, especially when establishing a living system on good-as-dead soils. Health is connecting everything we do on the farm. We take the temperature of curing compost, just as we took the temperature of our son Lovael (9) who last week ran a fever. Elouan (5) goes off with a little machete to harvest salad for the chicken. We mill corn, add coal and fishmeal, and mix it together to let it ferment a day and then tomorrow feed the chicken. We eat their eggs.
With the kids I go out in the afternoon heat to take soil samples of the still almost barren soil. The Mexican heat is hard to bear, even in February. No wonder soils dry out, and microbial life happens so fast that soil carbon mostly evaporates before it forms. You need a lot of syntropic farming to build humus. Because that is the main practice of syntropic farming: prune and drop. Cut lower branches, and simply leave the cuttings on the ground to cover soil, feed micro-organisms and eventually seep into the soil as nutrients and carbon. The other pillars are to work with species who help each other, and to work with the natural succession of species in regenerating ecosystems over time.
Ernst Götsch is a now famous Swiss farmer who developed the syntropic practice in Brazil, quickly restoring degraded land while producing more cacao and other produce than his neighbours. Philip Barton (‘PJ’) actually worked with Götsch for some months to learn and now helps Kareem to build his farm. PJ, friendly intense British eyes, founder of Minds of Soil, uses the Soil Food Web methods to really see soil. PJ looks at the fungi, mostly. Or more precisely, at the ratio between fungi and bacteria. And he is literally looking. PJ brought his microscope and counts the micro-organisms. Because that is where the magic happens.
Regenerating the land starts with compost. Round bales on pallets are kept under a roof, and they are definitely alive. The temperature of the bales is taken daily with thermometers that go all the way in. Freshly made, the micro-organisms activity explodes and the temperature reaches about 60 degrees Celsius. This kills the ‘bad’ germs, but keeps the good ones. As the temperature goes down, the compost is spread out and – crucially – left to cure. During the curing, the fungi start growing. Now, the rate of fungi to bacteria starts improving, from perhaps 0,5 : 1 towards 10 : 1 or more.
Why are the fungi so important? They do a lot for plants, for life. They are literally the interface between life and death, converting dead plant material into food for new plants. Fungi also break down rocks and sand into smaller pieces, making these minerals available for new life. Fungi connect with roots to vastly improve their surface and reach. Once you have seen this, it is impossible to ‘unsee’. To me, it now is very weird that many Western farmers but also soil scientists have a blind eye to mycelium. PJ sure doesn’t. In his work with Ernst Götsch, the syntropic farming pioneer, he found that Götsch’s methods improve the mycelium dramatically.
Because compost is one, it is bringing life back to the soils. But then feeding the soil life is second. And how to feed soil life? With plants! It starts with covering the soil at all times, and with pruning. A lot of pruning. When we arrive, Kareem just has a new hedge-mower that is perfect to cut the Mombasa grass, a grass related to Miscanthus (Elephant grass). It grows fast, already in the poor soil. Cutting the grass, and not remove it, covers the soil and adds carbon. The dead plant material is full of carbon, in the form of food for soil life. The soil now is poor because it has been used, or abused, for growing peanuts. Just peanuts. We spend a good day sampling the soil, and for the most part we need a hammer to ram our make-shift soil probe 30 centimeters down. The soil is hard as rock, and very poor in carbon. Apart from in two places, where a lot of water, compost, cover crops and different species of plants have been used.
Adding soil life and carbon recreates healthy soils. This soil life, with plants that are good at sequestering nitrogen, enables farming without artificial fertiliser and without poison. And without yearly plowing. It is a system of complex systems, working together to create food and to create life.
For us, life begins in the morning. At seven, the sun just behind a hill and it is still cool. We join MJ, a longer-term volunteer. MJ is recovering from surgery and the farm life also heals his body. His work is primarily to feed the chicken. We take the heavy buckets of fermented feed for the laying hens. They are wild when we approach the fence. MJ teaches us how to throw the food a bit behind the chicks, and we quickly sneak in. We throw large hands full of feed, and the hens get so enthousiast they don’t even let the food touch the ground. They love it. They eat a lot! After feeding we help prepare the feed for the next day. MJ gives Elouan (5) a small machete and he’s off with another farm hand to come back with buckets full of chicken salad (and all of his fingers). We mix the greens with corn, fish meal, some carbon and water, and leave it to ferment for the next day. Thick chicken kombutcha.
There are chicken for eggs, and others for the meet. Kareem and me have a great time moving the somewhat portable coop to a new location. We lift it, walk some steps, some tens of chicken escape. Always nice to see two grown up men chasing chicken. Catching them one by one they feel warm, alive and healthy in my hands. It is nice as it is annoying. Those damn chicken! What does Kareem like the most about his new farm life? Eating! “It’s great to have our own chicken meat on tap.” He used to be a vegetarian, but started eating meat they produce themselves. And meat he killed himself. He insists on slaughtering them himself, with two people, one holding the chicken in two hands while the other slits the throat. It is fundamentally different, to eat a chicken you held while it was dying. A slight reminder of the fact that also we will someday die.
We get to have a taste of chicken some days later, when we share a meal with all volunteers and farm workers. Kareem and me sit on a small table aside. Why don’t you sit at the head of the large table, I ask him? That’s not his kind of leadership. I am reminded of my theory about software developers and ego. As a software developer you have to be able to effectively collaborate in highly complex surroundings. It doesn’t really work when you put yourself first; the project dictates what must be done. You need to work with complex systems created by others, trusting on their specifications. And you need to test in practice; each bit of code needs testing, trying, changing, iterating. Software projects develop over time, they start with a purpose and then grow in ecosystems of software frameworks, user requirements, user feedback and evaluation of outputs.
Mycelium is a complex system. The soil is a complex system. Soil life on the farm will evolve in iterations, under unpredictable influences of sun, rain, humans, animals. The chicken feed their poop back into the soil, adding nutrients. They plow the top layer looking for food, making it accessible for water. The week after we leave, water buffalo will be arriving. They do very well on the grass, while the grass will grow better because it is eaten. They will receive shade from the thousands of trees planted in between the petal-shaped meadows. They will further fertilise the soil and give their milk which Kareem will turn into butter. It’s not sure how the grass and trees will react to the buffalo. It will be a next iteration of Piedra Azul.
Piedra Azul also develop in layers, dependent on each other. The soil will support the plants an trees. The plants and trees grow in layers; the grass close to the ground, the banana quickly around it, with other species of trees growing slower but eventually taking more of the sunlight, converting it into carbon in the form of sugars that the roots will bring down into the soil, feeding the soil life. These layers are like frameworks in software, where one layer of code is dependent on the other. The first layers to develop are pioneer species, and while the soil with the ecosystem grows, with different species following each other in succession, some more important in the beginning of the system, others later on. Together over time they form the complex system.
A final parallel between Kareem’s farm and a software project: it can be copied. Deliberately Kareem will open-source all methods and supporting structures he is creating. This includes a literal software system, to keep track of purchases and produce, to effectively keep track of the business case. Because a business case it will be. After the farm has been established and the soil is regenerated, they will need just a few people to run the about 4 hectares, plus some to run the farm shop with cafe with children’s area, next to the big blue rocks that gave Piedra Azul its name. There might be a zip line, swings, and small donkeys. And already, neighbours are starting the find Piedra Azul as a place to swing by and meet while getting their eggs. The farm exists as a social place, a platform for regeneration. It is not only a way of food production that reverses climate change and stops species extinction. It is a model for living a good life, a life worth living. Everyone who is interested in copying some or all ideas and practices Kareem, his family and team are developing is warmly invited to contact, or to visit and take a look.
Please contact through us to get in touch for more information, to help and connect or volunteering opportunities. Photos by the author unless stated otherwise.