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by JohnJamesRambo 2750 days ago
I’m sorry but this fails reason on even a basic level and reminds me of something a snopes fact check would be needed for. There is x amount of energy in sunlight and if it is going through leaves it is not available to your crop to grow. Same goes for the nutrients fueling all those trees etc. He is doing a great job at making a forest web but I’d like some verified figures for that cocoa production vs a real cocoa farm.
3 comments
alisson 2750 days ago
The natural habitat of Cocoa tree as usually bellow other trees, like many other species, Coffee too, it likes to be a little shaded by others, and the main thing about this method shown in the videos is very regular pruning and by organizing the organic matter in the ground the nutrients gets available for other species as well as more sunlight, so making very good use of the ecological succession - soil gets better and better naturally with nature processes - which is something very well known and studied in Botany but very little applied to agriculture, this is the gap this farmer is filling. As shown a little in the video, when he's going to grow something very sun hungry like lettuce or corn he does that by opening a big area in the forest and together with the lettuce he introduces seeds of other trees for the next natural succession.

I don't have an actual verified study to show you :/ But I believe there are a bunch of studies, as I have seeing a few universities making them, but I don't know how to find them. All I have now is my own experience on this topic.

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masklinn 2750 days ago
> There is x amount of energy in sunlight and if it is going through leaves it is not available to your crop to grow.

Crops are not necessarily sun-bound, other factors/resources tend to set the growth limits.

And the cacao tree specifically is a small (under 8m) tropical tree, at such a low height it's can't have evolved as a sun-loving plant given it's only ever well below the forest's canopy.

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ivanhoe 2750 days ago
Isn't cacao tree originally a rain forest tree, in which case it's probably naturally adapted to growing surrounded by taller trees in a semi-shaded conditions?
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