It's eight o'clock in the morning and I am standing at the base
of perhaps the only mountain in southwest Florida. Actually,
it's more of a hill. According to the plaque in front of me,
this 50-foot-high, bulldozer-built mound is called the Tropical
Highlands. The plaque’s description reads: "Steep land subject
to severe eroding." Joel Wildasin is the intern in charge of
this part of the Global Farm, part of the Educational Concerns
for Hunger Organization, or ECHO. He points uphill to the right
to several terraces, a good method to slow erosion, but on the
hill's left side is a better system. It's called SALT: Sloping
Agricultural Land Technology, an intercropping pattern that
alternates perennial hedgerows with annual cash crops. According
to the folks here at ECHO, the SALT system outperforms terraces
when growing crops on steep tropical hillsides. I carefully
study the left-hand slope. At first the overall effect is one of
contained chaos; there are just too many different kinds of
plants here to make sen