🌱 Friends, colleagues, I invite myself and all of you to observe this fact. We can make our farms as efficient, optimised, and lean as we like, but this will not change the substance. We lose because the rules of the game are written to ensure we lose. If one day we cease to be "economically unsustainable", it will likely be because we have become controllable like everyone else, or because the entire social system has changed.

🤸‍♂️ I believe it is our responsibility to push for this systemic change, starting by challenging this tendency to streamline our farms at the expense of complexity.

⚔️ Efficiency is a weapon of class war. It serves to push the independent producer towards wage labour. In the case of agriculture, it is not only a weapon, but also a lie. If we want to survive, we must stop looking for validation in a market constructed in this way.

🥕 I am not saying we shouldn't improve our farms. But perhaps they should function for us—for our wellbeing, for our happiness. They must not align with criteria that appear necessary to balance the books but are, in reality, cogs in a machine of centralised control.

👩‍🌾 And likely, even this will not be enough—but that is another (purely political) story.

🧑‍🌾 I recently received many comments on a post arguing that small-scale farms are more efficient than large, mechanised ones; and that without State subsidies, this reality would be undeniable. While largely positive, the response made me realise that efficiency is a deeply misunderstood concept.

🚜 Efficiency is a thermodynamic quantity: the ratio of work done to energy required. We often assume that because a machine is faster, it is more efficient. We hold this perception because running a machine is financially cheaper than hiring a person. But if we audit the calories rather than the money, the logic inverts.

📉 Consider moving 1 m³ of compost (500kg). Manually, a fit person can do this in 30 minutes. Burning roughly 250 kcal, I expend about 1 Megajoule (MJ) of biological energy. A small tractor, doing the same job, burns at least half a litre of diesel. With diesel’s energy density at ~36 MJ/litre, the machine consumes 18 MJ. Thermodynamically, the "efficient" machine is eighteen times more wasteful than the human body.

💸 Why is the mechanical route perceived as rational? Because we measure in money, not physics. Our economy subsidises fossil carbon, making millions of years of accumulated solar energy artificially cheap. Conversely, human energy is expensive—not because of biology, but because of policy.

👥 Physical "toil" is often only a burden because it is solitary. If moved by five people, the load is negligible. But fiscal systems discourage distributed labour. The tax burden and bureaucratic friction on employing five people are exponentially higher than the tax on a single litre of diesel. We are incentivised to centralise power in a machine rather than distribute work.

🌱 This might imply that a model with more people per hectare is not just ethically desirable, but physically more convenient - that is, efficient.

❓ The real question is: efficient in terms of what type of inputs and outputs? Energy, money, time, fatigue?

🗣️ There is a recurring argument in our field that farms relying on WWOOFers or volunteers are undermining the economic stability of professional agriculture. The logic suggests that if a farm cannot afford to pay full wages for every hour of labour, it is a failed business model that shouldn't exist.

💸 I find this critique ironic because it ignores the rigged game we are playing. Industrial agriculture is propped up by massive State subsidies (CAP) and artificially cheap fossil fuels—invisible supports that allow big farms to lower costs despite their ecological inefficiencies. For small-scale farms that operate outside this subsidy bubble, volunteer energy is a useful counterbalance. We are trading non-renewable energy for labour, and machinery for human hands. In a market that heavily penalises labour-intensive restoration, the volunteer model is often one of the most effective ways to make the regeneration of the landscape viable.

🤝 There is also the accusation that volunteering displaces "real" jobs. But this relies on the false assumption that a volunteer and an employee are interchangeable units. They are not. A WWOOFer is not a substitute worker; they are a student and a temporary community member. The value exchanged is not just labour for cash, but assistance for education, food, and mentorship. If we were forced to monetise this interaction, we wouldn't replace the volunteer with a paid employee; we would simply stop hosting. The result wouldn't be more jobs, but less access to land and knowledge. We are trying to cultivate an "ecology of freedom," where relationships are defined by mutual aid rather than just a contract.

👩‍🌾 Some argue that because only the privileged can afford to work for free, this is merely "rural tourism" for the wealthy. But this argument inadvertently defends the very capitalist logic it claims to oppose: it assumes that money is the only legitimate mediator of value. By exchanging food and shelter for help, we allow a person to live without selling their time to the market. This is not replacing paid jobs; it is a refusal of wage slavery. I don't want to be an employer managing employees; I believe in mutual aid, not State ratification. We are not extracting labour but sharing the 'means of production'—land and skills. This isn't tourism; it is an attempt at radical redistribution of capability.

👨‍🏫 Of course, this is not "free" labour. It is an intense investment. I take immense pride in the hours I spend teaching, correcting posture, and explaining the biological "why" behind a task. This is why we prioritise long-term stays at Ortoforesta. We invest heavily in the first few weeks so that the volunteer evolves into a skilled steward. By the time they have learned, they are contributing meaningfully, not just as "help," but as capable growers.

🛠️ This creates a layer of resilience that money can't buy. We are engaging in a cross-pollination of skills, hosting engineers, carpenters, and creatives who bring solutions a standard payroll could never capture. It is a symbiotic relationship: they gain access to land and knowledge, and the farm gains a diverse, adaptive intelligence that strengthens it against shocks.

📜 It is also worth remembering that these exchanges are legal. Frameworks like WWOOF are recognised associations facilitating educational exchange, not subordinate employment. They exist to bridge the gap between urban life and rural reality. To equate a structured educational stay with exploitation is to misunderstand the fundamental distinction between an employee and an apprentice.

🌱 This distinction is vital, because - I don’t know about you - but the world I am working towards is one of small-scale community effort, involving less money movement and more resource and skill exchange. As a vegetable grower, selling produce is almost marginal to the mission of regenerating the role of food in our ecosystemic interactions. If I lose a customer because they decide to go off and grow their own food, I have succeeded.

Similarly, if I lose an apprentice because they go off and start their own farm, I celebrate it. They will return not to buy a product or to work, but to exchange advice, seedlings, and expertise.

In syntropic systems, pruning is utilized to mimic natural ecosystem disturbances such as herbivory or storm damage. By pruning a support plant, practitioners create a temporary, managed gap in the ecosystem structure.
Field observations suggest that this intentional disturbance initiates a beneficial chain reaction. While the above-ground benefit—increased solar access for lower strata—is well understood, the working hypothesis of syntropic agriculture posits that a significant portion of the benefit is derived from a "pulse" of resources and signals triggered underground, theoretically stimulating the surrounding plant community.

In this article I discuss this phenomenon and cite some studies that support the anecdotic evidence.

https://www.cortesedario.com/post/the-growth-pulse-how-pruning-one-plant-feeds-an-entire-system

🚜 Next season, 60% of our sowings at @ortoforesta will be F1 hybrids. This shift from our usual focus follows autumn trials with undeniable results: in our regenerating system, many F1s offered superior uniformity and disease resistance. We must be honest about field data, even when it challenges our ideals.

🧬 F1s are the offspring of two inbred parent lines. This triggers "hybrid vigour", but thi comes at a cost: the offspring won't breed true.

⚠ To produce these hybrids, breeders often use Cytoplasmic Male Sterility (CMS), rendering the "mother" line pollen-sterile. This creates a genetic bottleneck. Unlike Open Pollinated (OP) varieties or Landraces—which evolve with the land—an F1 is genetically static. It lacks the variability to adapt, and its dominance shrinks the planet’s agricultural gene pool.

💰 F1 seeds often cost many times more than OPs. The selection we made for this season is focussed on flavour and uniformity, but the industry often selects for yield and adaptability.
However, the deepest cost is political: F1s create a dependency on multinational corporations, breaking the tradition of seed as a community resource. The grower stops being a steward and becomes a consumer, reliant on external inputs.

🗣️ F1s aim for centralisation. In this, they are tools of a system prioritising control over sovereignty. The danger is blind dependency
Why use them then? Because we believe it’s possible to use a tool without submitting to its logic. We will use F1s as a way to temporary streamline things this season, but we won't be hypocrites; we'll own the contradiction.

📉 We are alert to the risk of an emergency measure becoming a permanent protocol, so we aim to scale back to 20% by 2027. A farm’s "regenerative" status should be measured by its direction, not a snapshot. Our horizon remains fixed on OPs and developing our own landraces.

🫘 Speaking of landraces, we’re working on Borlotti and Snowcap Beans, Sugar Snap Peas, Sunset Corn and Costoluto giallo Tomatoes! Let me know if you want to see them and I'll share some photos.

A Regenerative Agroforestry course here at Ortoforesta last week. This time, I tried a different format, with more interactive moments and a group pruning session to observe the management of an already established system in its various components: fruit trees, shrubs, support trees, and herbaceous plants.
For those interested, we will repeat the same course during the autumn pruning, on September 20th. More info at cortesedario.com/corsi-presenza