[Sdpg] A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees NY times Nov 21/Forest Garden

Wed Nov 23 08:38:12 PST 2011

As a follow up, here is an excellent video interview with Mark Shepard a Wisconsin farmer who farms using tree guilds amongst his row crops.  His methods are based on his studies of permaculture.

http://vimeo.com/22330819

Cheers,

Diego
www.bokashicomposting.com  

--- On Wed, 11/23/11, Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe at silcom.com> wrote:

From: Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network <lakinroe at silcom.com>
Subject: [Sdpg] A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees NY times Nov 21/Forest Garden
To: sdpg at arashi.com
Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 7:03 AM

A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/quiet-push-for-agroforestry-in-us.html?_r=2

Anne Sherwood for The New York Times

PIONEERS Gloria Flora's forest garden includes berries and medicinal
plants.

By JIM ROBBINS

Published: November 21, 2011

PIONEERS Gloria Flora's forest garden includes berries and medicinal
plants.

By JIM ROBBINS

Published: November 21, 2011

HELENA, Mont. — On a forested hill in the mountains north of Montana’s
capital, beneath a canopy of pine and spruce, Marc and Gloria Flora
have planted more than 300 smaller trees, from apple and pear to black
walnut and chestnut.

RSS Feed

 Get Science News From The New York Times »

Beneath the trees are layers of crops: shrubs like buffalo berries and
raspberries, edible flowers like day lilies, vines like grapes and
hops, and medicinal plants, including yarrow and arnica.

Turkeys and chickens wander the two-acre plot, gobbling hackberries and
bird cherries that have fallen from trees planted in their pen, and
leaving manure to nourish the plants.

For the Floras, the garden is more than a source of food for personal
use and sale. Ms. Flora, an environmental consultant and former
supervisor for the United States Forest Service, is hoping it serves as
a demonstration project to spur the growth of agroforestry — the
science of incorporating trees into traditional agriculture.

The extensive tree canopy and the use of native plants, she says, make
the garden more resilient in the face of a changing climate, needing
less water, no chemical fertilizers and few, if any, pesticides. “It’s
far more sustainable” than conventional agriculture, she said.

The idea is to harness the ecological services that trees provide.
“Agroforestry is not converting farms to forest,” said Andy Mason,
director of the Forest Service’s National Agroforestry Center. “It’s
the right tree in the right place for the right reason.”

The Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency,
began an initiative this year to encourage agroforestry.

Depending on the species, trees make all sorts of contributions to
agriculture, experts say. Trees in a shelter belt reduce wind and water
erosion. Some trees serve as fertilizers — they take in nitrogen from
the atmosphere, or pump it from deep underground and, when they drop
their leaves, make it available upon decomposition.

Trees planted along streams can take up and scrub out polluted farm
runoff. They increase species diversity by providing habitat, and some
of those species are friendly to farmers — bees and butterflies that
help pollinate crops, for example. (One study showed that 66 species of
birds benefit from windbreaks on farms.) Trees can keep a field cooler
and more moist.

Some research also shows that cattle farmers can improve their income
by introducing trees, both by selling timber and by cooling cows in the
shade.

And trees in general help the environment by absorbing greenhouse gases
and by cleaning up polluted water — countering some of the effects of
large-scale agriculture.

“The biggest problem with food production is environmental
degradation,” said Gene Garrett, an emeritus professor of forestry and
former director of the Center for Agroforestry at the University of
Missouri.

Properly placed belts of trees and other vegetation along streams can
filter out 95 percent of the soil sediment that washes off farm fields,
studies show, and up to 80 percent of phosphate and nitrogen that runs
off.

While the idea of farming with trees is being reborn in the United
States, it is not new. It got its start here in the Dust Bowl era, when
trees were planted in shelter belts to stop severe wind erosion, Mr.
Mason said. And around the world, agroforestry goes back centuries.
“Many generations have been on the land,” said Jill M. Belsky, a
professor of rural and environmental sociology at the University of
Montana who has studied forest farms. “They have deep ecological
knowledge and many cycles of these seasons.

“For example, they taste the soil and say, ‘We need a few more chickens
in here’ ” for fertilizer.

Elsewhere, “working” trees are being used to replenish eroded or desert
landscapes. A program in Niger has greened millions of acres in the
last 20 years.

There are several approaches to agroforestry. Grazing livestock under a
canopy of trees is called silvo-pasture, for instance. In alley
cropping, an ancient technique that is becoming more common in the
United States, rows of commercially valuable hardwood trees like oak
are alternated with rows of corn, wheat or grasses for biofuel.

Agroforestry operations are also helping raise specialty crops. Nicola
MacPherson raises timber in the Ozarks, and grows shiitake and oyster
mushrooms on the waste branches; she is also establishing a truffle
orchard. Then there are forest gardens like the one the Floras are
creating.

Agroforestry is not just as simple as sticking trees in the ground — it
can be a sophisticated form of management. “The key to a lot of systems
is how they manage shade and light,” Dr. Belsky said. In one common
system — teak trees over vegetable crops — as the over-story closes,
limiting light, “the types of crops below change.”

Here in Montana, the Floras say they hope that their garden will evolve
as conditions change. The climate of the northern Rockies, though, is a
world away from tropical forest farms, and the Floras are pioneers.

They have had their share of learning experiences. Bees left their
hives and never came back; the Floras had to pollinate their fruit
trees by hand, with paintbrushes. One October, trees were killed by a
snowstorm and bitter cold. And there are rodents.

“Gophers do a lot of damage,” Ms. Flora said. “They eat tree roots,
carrots and potatoes.” Her Yorkshire terrier, Rocky, has been the best
remedy so far.

The soil is nutrient-poor, but a forest garden turns marginal soil into
much more fertile ground. As the needles and leaves fall and animal
waste collects, nutrients increase over time.

One major hurdle to widespread adoption of agroforestry, though, might
be conventional thinking about trees.

“Families spent generations removing trees to practice agriculture, and
we’re up against that,” said Dr. Garrett, the emeritus professor here.
“We have to stress that if you don’t put them in the way, you can use
working trees to benefit agriculture.”

ADDED LINKS thanks John Valenzuela

Nice article to see in the national media. It includes some great
agroforestry links:

National Agroforestry Center: http://www.unl.edu/nac/

USDA Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Alternative Crops
and Plants, Agroforestry page:

http://afsic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=2&tax_level=2&tax_subject=298&topic_id=1428

One link is not well labeled:

While the idea of farming with trees is being reborn in the United
States, it is not new. 

-this links to the great website (with a Pacific Island emphasis) at: http://www.agroforestry.net/

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Agroforestry page:

http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/landuse/forestry

My favorite quote from the article is:

And around the world, agroforestry goes back centuries. “Many
generations have been on the land,” said Jill M. Belsky, a professor of
rural and environmental sociology at the University of Montana who has
studied forest farms. “They have deep ecological knowledge and many
cycles of these seasons. 
“For example, they taste the soil and say, ‘We need a few more chickens
in here’ ” for fertilizer. 

John Valenzuela, Chairperson

Golden Gate Chapter, California Rare Fruit Growers

http://www.crfg.org/

http://www.crfg.org/chapters/golden_gate/index.htm

Cornucopia Kitchen Gardens and Food Forests

John Valenzuela Permaculture Services

Horticulturist, Consultant, Educator

California, Hawai'i 
phone: (415) 246-8834

e-mail: johnvalenzuela at hotmail.com

http://cornucopiafoodforest.wordpress.com

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
Sdpg mailing list
Sdpg at arashi.com
https://www.arashi.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/sdpg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/san-diego-permaculture/attachments/20111123/67f9bc17/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 95685 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/san-diego-permaculture/attachments/20111123/67f9bc17/attachment.jpe>