I thank you with all my heart for the invitation. I want to say that I'm not used to this type of environment. I was waiting for a friend to do my presentation at the panel, but she couldn't make it due to the traffic.
So that's that. But there's no problem. I hope I can convey my message.
Just a short introduction. Currently, I'm a rural grower. I started doing it because of my family.
And, on the other hand, I started doing this due to a project I participated in the 70's. Last century, I worked as a geneticist and I did genetic breeding. That work made me question things.
I'm from a generation that wanted to change the system in the 60's. We couldn't do it. So we continued to question things.
We questioned our efforts and the work we had done creating plant varieties and genotypes that were tolerant and resistant to diseases and pests that attack them due to the increasingly worse conditions that we create. There's a peculiarity. When you create a new variety or genotype, a short time afterwards, three to eight years, that genotype is no longer resistant.
It may be a GMO, a hybrid or something else. It may be a genotype chosen for its resistance. In a short time, it loses that resistance and you have to find a new one.
It's like Sisyphus' task. Sisyphus is a character from Greek mythology who was condemned for his bad behavior and sentenced to push a rock up the hill. He could only be absolved from the sins he committed if he managed to take the rock up the hill.
Every time he approached the top, the rock slipped and rolled back down and he got weaker. So it was an eternal punishment. I see modern human beings and their efforts to try and cheat plants.
I'll say it. Cheating. We try to pretend they are better.
We force the ecosystem and try to harness it to support the consequences of our bad conduct. I wonder if we can be smarter and look for ways to make plants feel good and thrive; as opposed to adjusting them to worse conditions. We create those conditions with our growing practices.
Today, it's been forty years since I stopped working with breeding. I'll tell you that I'm creating agroecosystems similar to natural ecosystems indigenous to the regions I work in. The ecosystems are similar, not the same.
They have similar dynamics and mechanics. For thirty-three or thirty four years I've been living in the same place in the tropics, in the country side of the state of Bahia, the Atlantic Forest. I've grown cocoa and other fruits in my farm.
I always joke when people visit me and ask what I grow. I tell them I grow Amazon-Atlantic Forests. It's strongly influenced by the Amazon.
I grow cocoa. Cocoa is primarily an Amazon crop. Along with cocoa, I grow pupunha, açaí, cupuaçu, bacaba, bacabi.
I plant different fruits and trees from the Amazon. Also, I grow Asian jackfruit. Many of these fruits have a strong citric element.
Besides these fruits, there are jequitibá trees, jatobá and jatobá from the sugar areas of São Paulo, which are two completely different genotypes. Our pequi preto and other types of pequi. I grow everything that I can find in my research trips.
I bring it back with me and include it in the ecosystem. There's one peculiarity, I don't use poison. I don't use fertilizer.
I don't use chemicals. I'm not exterminating anything. I don't do indiscriminate weeding.
I don't remove plants. I let them thrive. The only thing I do is to optimize life processes.
I always look for the best solution, always searching for the most viable option. And I work based on the principles of my creation; the productive forests. The principles of genetics that exist in our planet in the processes of life.
I use 100 times more material than what actually germinates. So if I want one cocoa tree, I plant 100 seeds. Some call it a waste.
It's not 100 hybrids or clones, I'm talking about 100 different genotypes. I make it a point to use genotypes. I don't neglect clones.
I do some cloning later in the process as well. But I plant without cloning. However, I'm not contrary to anything.
If somebody gives me coffee seeds, I'll plant both seeds together. How do they work together? I have some criteria.
Each seed plays a part. This is really important. Each living being in this planet, every species that came around and the ones that will come are here to perform their tasks and to fulfill their role driven by internal pleasure.
The relationship between them is based on unconditional love and cooperation. We didn't learn that. Our beliefs, for thousands of years, have led us to the same disaster time and again.
The erosion of civilization. The erosion of civilization as described by Montgomery in his book "Dirt", published in the United States. It describes the story of occupation and colonization and the decline of the ecosystems.
The erosion of ecosystems and the dialectic process that follows. The decline of culture and civilization. We know it from archeology and history.
We know it on a local level, ten thousand years ago. And then, on a regional level, there were different attempts. Later on, it happened on a continental level.
We're talking about the days of the Roman Empire. It happened in a continent level. However, we see it happening globally.
Humans beings always make the same mistakes. Continuously. Even though some wise men from Babylon 2,700 years ago wrote that wise people learn from the mistakes made by others.
Intelligent people learn from their own mistakes. And foolish people repeat the same mistakes they made, and adopt the mistakes made by others. That's exactly what we're doing repeatedly.
It's the erosion of civilization. We act as if we were autistic. We believe we're the most important and most intelligent.
The fact we see ourselves as more intelligent and the most important beings puts a veil over our eyes. It hinders our ability to see that we're not the intelligent ones. We're part of a macroorganism, part of an intelligent system.
All of us, every being. Including bacteria, viruses, including grasses, trees, and every animal. Every being is born with the tools to communicate with all the others, both actively and passively.
But we speak Portuguese and English. And we insist that plants, which don't speak Portuguese or Chinese, are not intelligent. It's proven scientifically that they are not intelligent.
Yes, they are. They're part of an intelligent system. As I said very clearly, each of these beings is born with the tools to perform their tasks and fulfill their role driven by internal pleasure.
Drven by internal pleasure. Laozi, some 2,700 years ago, wrote it in very concise words. But we failed to understand.
Things are not supposed to be made, they are already happening. Since they are happening, they are active. And it's pleasurable.
If we could see our true function, it would be so beautiful. I'm telling you. It would be paradise.
I see this all over the planet. I worked in the subarctic. I worked in northern Norway.
I worked in the Bolivian planes at a 5,000 meter altitude. I worked in the deserts. I work and live in the rain forests.
I worked in the Brazilian savannah and wetlands. Everywhere I go could be paradise if we so wished. It's a wonderful world, everything is perfect.
But we fail to understand it. We can't see it. Let's try and create agroecosystems similar to natural ones in the way they work, with dynamics close to natural ecosystems indigenous to their region.
We must follow the rules. 2,700 years ago, there was a Greek man called Aesop. We've since reduced him to a story teller.
He was not a story teller. Each of his fables is just like Laozi's. Their message is clear, though it's in ancient language.
It's the language that their contemporaries could understand. The message is clear. He lets Cronus speak for him.
In one of his fables, Cronus, who created the beings of this planet. . .
I'm not saying you have to believe that. It's a parable. In parables, figures of speech are used for the people from that era to understand the meaning.
Cronus created the beings in the planet and the man. He said "man, I'll put you in this universe which is your paradise. Live well, occupy it, multiply.
You can do what you will, be creative. There is only one condition. Follow the laws that reign the macroorganism, which you are a part of.
All of us are. Not even us, gods from the Olympus can create our own laws. " The man accepted and he lived very happily.
One day, however, he multiplied. One day he started thinking "what if we created our own laws? We would be more powerful than the gods.
" So the man created a conflict with the gods from Olympus. And Cronus, his creator, was scratching his head thinking "what am I to do with this creation of mine? I'll kill him".
Determined to do it, Cronus grabbed his emblematic axe and came down from the Olympus to kill this pest. However, upon seeing the man he changed his mind. He started thinking differently.
"I'll do something else. Man, as punishment for your sins I'll cut you in half. As a consequence, you'll be doomed to search for your other half your entire life and you will never find it.
" So I read this. You can read about it in one of Plato's works from three hundred years later. But I don't think Plato had a higher understanding of it.
It's gone. I think we could see it in another way. The splitting in half is related to our rational and analytical thinking.
Modern human beings, for ten thousand years, since being expelled from paradise, in my interpretation, the modern man appeared roughly 35,000 years ago as an animal species. In the driest period of the last ice age. There was a change some 12,000 years ago.
In the beginning of the inter ice age, the man lost their habitat. After losing their habitat, he had a few choices. One was to go extinct.
But he chose to get away from the forests. Men do it till this day. Humans beings live everywhere.
Modern human beings, wherever they are, must have some grass in their yard. They need an open space to enjoy their environment. Exceptions are very rare.
Even for indigenous peoples this is true. They need to have an open space. I've visited many tribes.
It wasn't a few, but many indigenous communities. It's always the same. They have an open space to celebrate the fire and they use that open space to celebrate god and social events.
They need that open space. Why can't we live in the forest? It's a yearning we have as animals.
So we became desperate. Since then, we've been getting away from the forest. By doing that, you create problems.
It's a disharmonious interaction between components of the same macroorganism. That affects changes in that macroorganism. As a result, the presence of the being who causes disharmonious interactions becomes inconvenient.
That's the erosion of civilization. Our problem. .
. Do I have two minutes? Okay, I have two minutes left.
It's our problem. So we have two choices. Either we suffer periodically from these problems again.
. . because every time it happened it was the same thing.
We accumulate and concentrate. The phenomenon is the same. It happened in the same way.
Human beings converged into urban cities which today are megalopolis. Then, we pressure ecosystems and make inefficient use of resources and neglect them. Consider the bread roll that São Paulo citizens eat.
At least 1,200 times more energy is spent producing the roll than the energy contained in it. It's an insult to a living being called homo sapiens sapiens. My question is, why can't we act in a useful way?
We are created to perform our tasks and fulfill our roles. Do what we are supposed to do driven by internal pleasure. We are naturally frugivores.
I'm not saying you're only supposed to eat fruit. But we have a frugivore's intestine. We are adapted as frugivores.
We are good in processing seeds. Just like any other frugivore. We can have a positive energy balance.
We can have a good quality to quantity ration in the places we interact and in the entire planet. As far as predators. The worst predator we have in this planet is human beings.
We're not predators, we're kidnappers. Intelligent and rightful predators don't hunt based on their stomach. They hunt according to their prey's ability to optimize the ecosystem.
Hunger is the means to do that. I got it. That's how you do it.
Once you do that, you have energetic balance. You have good quality of life and a positive interaction with the place you live and the entire planet. If we optimize life processes, we do what I call syntropic agriculture.
The biggest external input we use for this activity in order to have high yield is wisdom. You don't need fertilizer or chemicals. Bacteria, disease and pests are part of the immune system.
We are fighting them and eating it afterwards. We forget that. They say "you are what you eat".
Some people say it's not quite true. But you are what you eat. Let's try to cultivate differently and behave differently.
And let's try to be loving beings. Let's go back to being sons and daughters of this planet. It's such a beautiful world.
We don't have a place better than this one. Thank you for tolerating me.
