[1] Götsch was born in 1948 in Raperswilen, Switzerland and moved to Brazil in the early 1980s, establishing himself in a farm in Southern Bahia.

[4] Götsch has achieved renown due to the results of his methods, evident in the successes of his farm Olhos D’Água.

[citation needed] Götsch's work in Latin America on models of agroforestry has led to the conversion of large tracts of degraded land into productive and diverse agroforests.

[6][7] He has developed a new technique of rapid recovery of poor soils by imitating existing patterns in nature in which carefully selected species of plants – a consortium of species – are placed at a given spacing and orientation, introduced in a predetermined sequence, and are heavily pruned during their growth period at regular intervals.

In the space of a few years, he has converted over 1200 acres of degraded land in Brazil into a productive rainforest that produces premium cacao, among other things.