“Taking care of the Earth by taking care of the soil so that it can take care of itself.”
Emilia Hazelip was a Catalan organic gardener and pioneer of the concept of synergistic gardening. Her farming methods were inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka after reading his book The One Straw Revolution.
Emilia Hazelip’s methods are similar to what we would see in a forest, where nature continuously grows and dies and returns everything back to the soil.
It is the micro organisms in the soil that feed the plants and destroy pathogenic bacteria.
In one gram of undisturbed soil, there can be up to four billion bacteria. The dead bodies of the bacteria can be up to 80 thousand kilos in one hectare of protected soil in one year. But in a cultivated soil this number falls to just 5 thousand to 6 thousand kilos.
In Synergistic Agriculture Emilia Hazelip gives four principals
- No cultivation
- No chemical or organic fertilizers
- No chemical treatments
- No compaction of the soil
Synergistic Agriculture utilizes the natural fertility of the soil and maintains that fertility permanently, through natural processes rather than human intervention.
Since the soil has its own dynamic, the adding of compensatory fertilizers: compost, ashes or other materials, is not necessary.
Since 1937 the Japanese microbiologist and farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, has worked toward a new agriculture, based on ecological principles, which he has named Natural Agriculture.
It is the cultural and climatic adaptations which Emilia Hazelip has developed during her years of research into Fukuoka’s non-labour agriculture that have resulted in the system which she calls Synergistic Agriculture, since this method utilizes the law of synergy in growing vegetables.