What Students Learnt from the APOPO Syntropic Agroforestry Plot at SUA

On 16 June 2025, a group of students (Group 6) presented what they had learnt from studying the APOPO syntropic agroforestry plot at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Morogoro, a field where trees, shrubs, ground cover and food crops grow together to bring degraded land back to life while still producing food and income.

A farm that grows like a forest

The plot follows the ideas of Ernst Götsch, who believed that a farm can copy the way a natural forest grows and renews itself. Seeing the idea on the ground made it much easier to understand. APOPO uses the system to restore land, improve the soil, increase biodiversity and support local livelihoods, and the students set out to see how well the plot is achieving this.

Trees that take turns

One of the first things the students noticed was how the trees take turns. Fast-growing pioneers such as Gliricidia sepium and Leucaena leucocephala come up first, providing shade, feeding the soil and adding organic matter. Under their cover, avocado and coffee grow in partial shade. Later, trees such as Cedrela odorata and macadamia take over as the long-term canopy, offering timber and nuts in the years ahead, while cocoa serves as a long-term cash crop.

Closer to the ground, pineapple covers the soil and brings in early income, beans fix nitrogen, and cardamom adds a spice crop that also helps to keep pests away.

What is not working yet

The plot also showed that not everything goes to plan. Maize and papaya were struggling under too much shade, and the fast-growing Cedrela was beginning to take over. The students saw plenty of bees and other pollinators moving through the plot, yet there were no beehives to make use of them. Animals and fish ponds, which are part of the full syntropic approach, have not yet been added.

Learning from a living system

For the students, the exercise was a chance to look closely at a land restoration system in action, see what is working and what is not, and think about how it could be made better.