A conversation with Emma for Bloom Magazine, on syntropy, entropy, and what farming taught me about being human.

Emma: Sjoerd, explain to me the difference between syntropy and entropy… I gather it’s about systems either working in order with each other, or fragmented in disorder?

Sjoerd: Syntropy — also called negentropy, or negative entropy — is the life-bearing, life-enhancing, self-organising strategy that nature operates from to sustain itself and every living organism within it. All living systems have mechanisms working toward syntropy built into their cells. Entropy, by contrast, is more of a human-made idea — talking about entropy is really talking about what Life isn’t.

So when we apply this to how we think, our orientation can either be syntropic — life-affirming, abundant, peaceful, collaborative, rooted in trust — or entropic: scarce, lacking, competitive, rooted in fear. These two opposing principles shape how we relate to life, how life relates to us, and how we navigate with the resources we have.

Emma: Wow! So you recently took part in the first Syntropic Farming course in Australia — how was that?

Sjoerd: It took place in Byron Bay, the first time these courses had been translated from Portuguese into English. It gave me an accelerated introduction to where the future of food is heading.

Emma: How did this system of farming develop?

Sjoerd: Syntropic Agroforestry was formulated over decades of direct observation — in the forest, on the land, and through indigenous wisdom still held today by people in Central America. There’s enormous wisdom there, kept alive because they know it’s true, and it’s resurfacing now because industrial agriculture simply isn’t sustainable. The birthplace of this work is Brazil — beautifully, the country with the highest rate of deforestation is also giving rise to the wisest way of reforesting the earth.

Emma: Isn’t that how cultures used to live? Watching the land, following nature’s rhythms? It feels like our connection to the earth has been lost since industrial agriculture took over.

Sjoerd: Our current farming system is entropic — outdated and unsustainable. It’s dependency-based, and it disempowers farmers from the natural knowledge of how to grow nutrient-dense food in abundance. It causes people to operate from fear — fear about money, about the mortgage, about turning a profit — which is an emotional, mental approach to life. But natural knowledge can never really be eliminated from our connection to nature. When I look at innovative systems — regenerative agriculture, biodynamics, food forestry — these are what will actually empower the farmers of the future. Feed the soil with living compost, rich microbial cultures, and forest dynamics, and you get soil that’s rich in life — which is the foundation for all life, including our own.

Emma: So true — soil health is so tied to our gut and overall health.

Sjoerd: Exactly. If life is about nurturing and diversifying life, it builds the layers where more can be grown and yielded. Cut a tomato in half, dry the seeds, and you could grow 150 tomato plants. You might not want 150 tomato plants, but that’s life’s principle — it’s not an accident, it’s not fear or scarcity driving it. Life creates surplus and abundance constantly. Once we understand that, and we feed more life into the ground, it naturally keeps coming back to us.

A lot of climate and environmental movements operate from fear about running out — I’m not saying we’re not facing real limits, but living in a fear-and-control paradigm isn’t part of the solution. You’re only responsible for you. Is fear driving your choices? Life is actually lush, loving, supportive, nurturing — and I see the future of food as genuinely prosperous.

Emma: So syntropic farming is really more than a farming system — it’s a way of thinking, an approach to life.

Sjoerd: Yes. Studying nature and the syntropy within it gives us beautiful insight into how we can grow and feel enriched in our own lives. But that’s also where the hard part comes in, because we humans carry emotions and memories from difficult experiences. What I realised, adopting syntropic thinking, was that I’d been seeing life through a pre-programmed set of entropic beliefs. Believing “weeds are bad,” for instance, is a fear-based, control-based idea — as if nature would work against itself. It doesn’t work that way. “Weeds” isn’t even a real category; it’s a judgment. Every plant has a species name and a function. Comfrey, for example, has a deep taproot that draws minerals up from deep in the soil — when you chop and drop it, that mineral becomes bio-available to everything around it.

What I learned from this course is that every element in life performs a function, and once we discover what that function is in relation to the larger system, we know how to work with it. When that clicked for me — wow.

So the bottom line: life only collaborates. It only works to create more life, more abundance, more water, more oxygen, more carbon in the soil, more nitrogen, more everything.

Emma: I read a quote from Pedro Diniz, CEO of Fazenda da Toca: “If we changed our perception and recognised nature as a great ally, a great inspiration, we would really change the way we behave toward the planet.”

Sjoerd: Yes — humanity has largely been conditioned to believe that operating from fear, needing to be in control, is the way to feel safe. Many of today’s global issues stem from that entropic mindset, and only a real shift in how we think and behave can address them.

Emma: [Laughs] So it’s about confronting and embracing our emotions in a positive way, because life wants us to grow…

Sjoerd: Our natural ability is to love, to care, to nurture — but that can’t come from the state most of humanity is currently operating in: fear, lack, control, scarcity, rush. We’ve outsourced so much of our own thinking because we’re too busy or too rushed. Freeing our minds takes more than a few new practices — it takes genuinely working through our own experiences, and weaning ourselves off fear, lack, and control. That’s a cultural shift.

Emma: So how do we shift from fear-based thinking into a syntropic way of thinking?

Sjoerd: The only formula I’ve found for releasing old emotional imprinting is this: deal with it. Get real with your story. Be vulnerable. Really feel what you feel — even if that means having a cry.

Emma: So our internal beliefs shape our external world — what we see is based on what we believe. If we want to see a more loving world, we need to do the inner work to free ourselves?

Sjoerd: Yes. The world doesn’t need to change, because life is actually fine without our interference. What we need is to change ourselves internally — and then what follows isn’t just sustainable, it’s regenerative, restorative. When we’re in a state of “I am enough, the world is enough,” we naturally attract more of that. We’re part of an intelligent system — when we can see ourselves as part of it, we don’t need to dominate, control, deflect, or protect. We can simply allow. Nature is more than its visible elements — it’s a network of relationships, dynamics, and constant exchange, and that’s also central to syntropic farming.

Emma: Just like holistic health — it’s not just nutrition, or fitness, or mindset. It’s the whole system working together.

Sjoerd: Yes. And I think the place we can really accelerate our own growth is through willingness — because that’s our authentic truth. The “will” doesn’t get strengthened by chasing goals or playing the hero — it gets strong, resilient, and clear by being vulnerable. That’s the real strength in a human being.

Emma: So nature is always regenerating — we can apply that to ourselves by letting go of old growth, old programming and beliefs, and allowing new growth, new perspectives, to come through.

Sjoerd: Exactly — and taking full responsibility for what we pass on to the next generation.

Emma: So internal growth is about loving the “weeds” in ourselves — identifying what’s lacking, digging to the root cause?

Sjoerd: If you pull a dandelion and leave a piece of the root behind, it grows right back — you can mow it forever and it keeps returning. To properly remove it, you dig deep, all the way to the tip of the root, gently, and take it somewhere it can still be of use.

Emma: That’s beautiful.

Sjoerd: Change always takes effort. You can resist it, or embrace it. Life is syntropy.