Progenetic Agroforestry

Our daily menus are based mainly on cereals, meat and dairy products, since time immemorial.

Demeter: For the Happiness or Misfortune of Men?

Whatever the cult of mythology makes him, the cultivation of cereals is a major cause of the degradation of the planet. Already the first crops on burns inaugurated the cycle “deforestation ? culture? grazing? desertification”, which was due to many fertile and green areas. In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, great wheat growers, left behind them immense stony expanses dotted with rare oasis; In Central America, corn-exhausted soils led to increasingly deadly wars until the Mayan disappeared. These destructive processes are experiencing a catastrophic explosion with modern agriculture and its monocultures saturated with pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Meat and Milk: Immeasurable Damage…

Meat and milk production is also devastating. It takes 50 to 100 times more surface area for a kilogram of beef than for a kilogram of carrots; the same kilogram of beef requires 13 to 20 tons of water, 160 times more than one kilogram of potatoes. Production of animal protein monopolizes huge surfaces: more than half of the crops are currently sacrificed for livestock feed!

Livestock is one of the main causes of environmental degradation: massive deforestation, heavy cereal consumption, greenhouse gases, acidification of forests, nitrate pollution, eutrophication of the ocean, etc. World meat consumption has increased fivefold in half a century, twofold in the last two decades. The globalization of Western food will only worsen the situation…

Still leaking? The nearest exoplanet is 600 light years away, and it is not known whether it is habitable or populated by dinosaurs… save what remains of our poor Earth!

What if human ecogenetics had the solution?

The farm program is directly dependants on human food requirements. Common diet also has many harmful health effects. So question number 1 is what type of diet would be consistent with the genetic data of the human organism.

Tradition is not a reliable reference: many culinary preparations dating back millennia have been scientifically proven harmful, including frying and grilling, which are the major causes of cancer and cardiovascular disease. And what about the rest of our table habits: where does the limit between our real needs and our false needs pass?

Our closest cousins, bonobos and chimpanzees, feed on some two thirds of fruit, a quarter of greenery and roots, and a twelfth of animal or vegetable proteins. None of these primates consume cereals or dairy products, and they hunt only very occasionally. Their genome is extremely close to ours, so it is very likely that a diet adapted to human genetics is close to that of these primates.

Would the systematic use of cereal, dairy and meat products reflect a change in the human genome? Or is it only a drift against nature, in contradiction with our genetic potential? In other words: what would a pro-genetic diet be, and what would be its effects on the environment?

Monocultures would give way to a “pro-genetic agroforestry”, bringing together wild or cultivated trees and plants that meet the innate needs of the human organism. Many varieties of fruit trees would be found in symbiosis, home to edible bushes, vegetable plants, herbage for poultry and small ruminants, apiaries for pollination and honey, and ponds for biodiversity and hydrological balance. Crops could be grouped according to the most favourable plant and animal associations, avoiding diseases and chemical treatments, under the rules of biological and biodynamic cultivation and even permaculture.

All cultivated areas would be arborealized, the few cereals or fodder plants still needed would grow under trees. This would prevent virtually all abuses of current agriculture, from the point of view of water and wind regulation, erosion, fume, soil life, etc. The painting would be idyllic from the aesthetic point of view and living environment: trees in bloom in the spring, green meadows, pets… Wood from fruit trees at the end of production would be an important carbon capture and a massive source of clean construction materials and renewable energy. Apart from the branches from the size or replacement of the trees too old, which would provide an important mulch and, better still, the small branches used in the revolutionary technique of the BRF (fragmented rameal wood), which guarantees an optimal enrichment of the bacterial flora of the soils (bacteria and microscopic fungi) on which the fertility and survival of the humus depends directly.

Question number 2 is then whether yields of calories, proteins and other nutrients would be obtained to feed populations as are supposed to be done by cereal monocultures and intensive farming. The stake is twofold, and not necessarily contradictory: on the one hand the immediate yield, on the other hand the long-term protection of the humus.

#A fundamental solution against famine in the world?

Human ecogenetics offers the experience of such a “progenetic agroforestry” to all growers, professionals or amateurs, agronomist engineers or ecologists that it might interest. A reliable set of empirical data is essential for planning the possible future of agriculture, humanity and the global ecosystem. The comparison of figures from different types of production is essential to draw relevant conclusions.

This will determine whether a diet closer to our genetic data would be practically applicacbles, from the point of view of the reserves of humus and water, as well as the nutritional intakes and production costs, and what its benefits would be in terms of public health and the environment. It is not a question of converting populations from the outset to a form of natural feeding, but of learning what is at stake. Progress in knowledge could lead to a general awareness, easier in the Internet era, and help restore global ecological balance.

The Association for Human Ecogenetics will itself conduct a pilot experiment that can serve as a nutritional and agricultural model. Its tasks will be to collect data on the ground, provide educational and financial support to other experimenters, consolidate data, distribute information, advise and share experiences.

If you are interested in participating or supporting a progenetic agroforestry experience, please contact us!