Reading the ground beneath you
You'll understand what a healthy soil food web looks like, why it matters for yield and resilience, and how to assess land before you buy or lease it.
The next wave of AI isn't coming for assembly lines or call centers.
It's coming for software engineers — and developers will be among the most disrupted roles
in the next 12 to 18 months.
Am I next?
The gap doubles every 18 months.
The question isn't whether you'll be affected.
It's whether you'll be ready.
Most people facing this transition look in the same direction: pivot into AI, start something new, go smaller and leaner. But those paths keep you inside the same system that just repriced you — competing with tools that improve faster than you can.
The answer is not another platform. It's a different substrate entirely.
You've been optimizing the wrong system.
There's one that doesn't deprecate, doesn't ship bugs —
and yields, in both senses of the word.
The systems that gave you salary, insurance, and identity are repricing you out. The next company won't be more stable. The next stack won't protect you. Real security — the kind that doesn't depend on a quarterly review or a board decision — is built with your hands, in soil, over years.
A well-designed agroforestry system doesn't lay you off. It doesn't pivot, restructure, or get disrupted. It grows stronger every season — and so do you, working it. You stop being a cost on someone else's spreadsheet and become the producer of your own resilience.
Not rent. Not a subscription. Not terms of service that change overnight. Land you own, tend, and design — that produces food, water, and independence. An asset that appreciates while you work it and compounds while you sleep.
The ability to read soil, design living systems, grow food, manage water cycles. Skills that can't be automated, don't require a license to renew, and transfer to any climate. Once you have them, no company can take them from you.
What you restore in the land restores something in you. The work is physical, seasonal, purposeful — the antidote to decades of abstract labor. You regenerate the ecosystem. It regenerates you. The planet gets healthier. So do you.
My name is Michel. I spent years building software — and for most of that time I told myself it mattered. Then the climate numbers stopped being abstract. The fires, the droughts, the reports that kept getting worse. I couldn't keep optimizing interfaces while the underlying system was failing.
Leaving wasn't a plan — it was a decision made from exhaustion and clarity at the same time. I found land in Caçapava, in the Vale do Paraíba, São Paulo state. Eroded pasture. Compacted soil. Nothing anyone would call promising. That was exactly the point. I needed to know if a degraded system could actually recover — or whether we'd broken it past repair.
What I built became Desperto.earth: a living agroforestry farm and regenerative culture center. The answer to my question turned out to be unambiguous — the land regenerates faster than we expect, once we stop working against it. Over ten years I transformed that pasture into a stratified food forest producing year-round. The failures were part of it. I teach those too.
Desperto.earth exists in Caçapava, São Paulo state. What you see below is what you'll work in.
Remote work severed the last structural reason to stay urban. Climate anxiety is doing the rest. Rural land inquiries across the US have surged since 2020 — and they haven't reversed. The direction is set.
Productive rural land in viable ecological regions — temperate climates, reliable water, good soil — has been appreciating steadily. The people who move early get optionality. Those who wait get priced out of the land that actually makes sense.
Buying fast is not the same as buying right. The gap between a productive piece of land and a money pit can be invisible from a car window — and devastating once you've committed capital to it.
Degraded soil that looks green in spring. Compacted subsoil that holds no water. Microclimates that collapse what you try to grow. Legal land-use restrictions that don't show up in the listing. A water table that disappears in drought years. These are not edge cases — they are the norm for land that hits the market at prices that feel accessible. The cost of getting it wrong isn't just financial. It's years.
Understanding agroforestry means you know how to read land before you commit to it — what's degraded versus what's recoverable, what water signs to look for, what succession the existing vegetation is telling you. That knowledge changes every decision that follows: which land to buy, how much to pay, what to plant first, and what to expect in year three.
This program is built on a single premise: you cannot regenerate land if the person working it is running on empty. The arc moves from the inside out. Wachuma on day 2 opens your perception before the work begins. Eight days of field training follow. Daily yoga and meditation ground the body through the learning. Ayahuasca on day 11 closes the cycle of inner work. And five days on one of the most beautiful coastlines in Brazil give your whole system time to settle before you return. The ceremonies and the coast are optional. The sequence is intentional.
Wachuma on day 2. Ayahuasca on day 11. One opens the work. One closes it. Both led by Marcos Luz.
Day 1: arrival and reception. Days 3–10: immersive training in syntropic agriculture, ecosystem design, and economic architecture.
Days 12–16 on the São Paulo north coast — beaches, Atlantic Forest, Ilhabela. Slow down. Integrate what you lived.
Days 3–10. Four modules. Hands in the soil from the first morning.
You'll understand what a healthy soil food web looks like, why it matters for yield and resilience, and how to assess land before you buy or lease it.
Using syntropic agriculture principles developed by Ernst Götsch, you'll design a system that produces food, sequesters carbon, and requires less and less intervention over time.
What does a regenerative operation actually cost? What does it earn? We'll map real financial models — from subsistence to commercial scale — and you'll build your own.
Every design you'll build in this training runs on you. A degraded operator produces a degraded system — and chronic stress is silent degradation. Each morning begins with guided yoga and meditation before field work begins. Not as a bonus. As uptime monitoring. You'll leave with a daily practice that holds the rest of the work together.
This isn't a tour. It's an immersion designed for people who learn by doing — and who understand that the land and the person tending it are part of the same system.
Maximum 12 participants per cohort. You'll leave with a design for your land — and with 11 other people who made the same decision, at the same moment, from the same starting point. That network doesn't dissolve when you fly home. For most participants, it becomes the most durable thing they take with them.
The São Paulo north coast — Ubatuba, Ilhabela, Caraguatatuba, São Sebastião — is one of the most preserved coastal stretches in the South Atlantic. Atlantic Forest descending straight to the sea. Beaches reachable only by trail or boat. Serra do Mar as backdrop. You will not find many places like this left on the planet.
This is where the arc completes. The inner work with the ceremonies, the physical work in the field, the daily practice of yoga and meditation — all of it lands here, in a setting designed by nature for exactly this: slowing down, breathing, integrating. After what you've lived, there is nothing more useful than doing very little in a very beautiful place.
Ubatuba has over 100 beaches. Many are accessible only by trail or boat. No resorts. Just sea, forest, and granite.
One of the largest remaining Atlantic Forest fragments in Brazil starts here. Trails, waterfalls, endemic wildlife — the ecological system the training taught you to read, now at full scale.
An island of 340 km² with 80% protected as state park. Diving, sailing, mountain trails — and fishing restaurants that still exist the old way.
Caiçara cuisine, fresh seafood, artisanal cachaça, coastal-forest culture. A parallel journey worth taking on its own.
This module includes transport from the farm to the coast, accommodation in selected guesthouses, and a curated itinerary. Beaches, trails, diving, and rest — following the pace of the group. You came to regenerate. This is where that word stops being a concept and becomes something you can feel.
Yes. Syntropic agriculture principles work in any temperate or subtropical climate. Participants have applied these methods in California, Oregon, the Carolinas, and New England. The design logic travels. The species change.
No. Many participants use this experience to evaluate whether — and where — to acquire land. Others already have land and need a design framework. Both are valid entry points.
The economics of regenerative agriculture are real and improving. We'll cover diversified revenue models: direct sales, agritourism, carbon markets, consulting, and education. You won't leave with theory — you'll leave with numbers.
Completely optional. The eight-day training is fully self-contained — you can attend without the ceremonies. For those who choose to participate, both are led by Marcos Luz (17 years of practice, Santo Daime tradition). Each participant has a prior conversation with Marcos to assess fit, medical contraindications, and intention. Ritual use of ayahuasca has been legal in Brazil since 2010 (CONAD). Wachuma (San Pedro cactus) is used in the same ceremonial framework.
The training is the core — days 1 and 3–10. The ceremonies and the coast extend the arc. One price per person, everything included within each package.
Not included: international flights · transfer to/from GRU · personal expenses · travel insurance
Ceremonies require a prior conversation with Marcos. Voluntary for each participant.
Itinerary adapts to the group's pace
Separately would cost US$ 3,900 · you save US$ 700
Day 2 — Wachuma (San Pedro). An Andean cactus medicine used for millennia in ceremonial contexts. Wachuma works slowly and gently — it opens perception, grounds presence, and prepares the body and mind for deep learning. This is the threshold before the farm.
Day 11 — Ayahuasca. An Amazonian plant medicine that works differently — more internal, more confronting. After eight days of field work and new mental models, ayahuasca offers a different kind of integration: a mirror for what just happened and what comes next.
Both ceremonies are optional. Both are led by Marcos Luz. Neither is a recreation. Each participant speaks with Marcos before joining — medical history, medications, and intention are assessed carefully.
I grew up in the interior of Amazonas, in a family that kept the forest's knowledge alive. My grandmother was the first person who brought me to ayahuasca — not as an experiment, but as a conversation with what cannot be seen.
For the past 17 years I have dedicated my life to holding ceremony responsibly, within the Santo Daime tradition and yawanapi medicine. I have worked with groups in retreats across Acre, Minas Gerais, and the Vale do Ribeira. Since 2019, I have been collaborating with spaces that integrate plant medicine with life transition — people in movement, remaking their choices.
What I offer is not a trip. It is a mirror. The medicine shows what is already there. The work is what we do with what we see.
Each participant has a prior conversation with Marcos. The ceremonies are not suitable for everyone — medical contraindications and current medications are assessed carefully. You can join the training without the ceremonies.
Day 3 — the morning after Wachuma — is a gentle arrival day on the farm. The day after ayahuasca (day 12) is a rest day before the coast begins. Integration is not an afterthought.
Ritual use of ayahuasca has been legal in Brazil since 2010, regulated by CONAD. Wachuma (San Pedro) is similarly used in ceremonial contexts. Both ceremonies are conducted within those frameworks.
Tell us a little about where you are. We'll follow up personally — no automations, no funnels.
"Thank you. Michel will be in touch within 48 hours."