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The Importance of Tree Crops in Sustainable Agriculture
THE IMPORTANCE OF TREE CROPS IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE
Tree Crops are the most common perennial agricultural method. More specifically, orchards are one of the most common and successful forms of perennial agriculture. A well-maintained peach orchard will give you a steady crop for up to 20 years. An apple orchard can last up to 50 years and well-maintained pecan tree may very well continue to produce for up to 150 years. Our agricultural systems have been designed almost exclusively for staple annual crops. However, transitioning into perennial agricultural systems that can produce food staples is one of the challenges we´ll face in the coming years in order to create a sustainable form of agriculture.
THE FUNCTIONS OF A TREE
A perennial agriculture system based on the cultivation of tree crops offers a number of advantages over the traditional annual agriculture methods of staple carbohydrates such as corn and wheat. While these systems to take several years to get established, once production has begun the main body of work is maintenance and harvest. Tree crops such as fruit and nuts, then, can become a staple of our diet without having to till the soil year after year.
Permaculture asks us to find several functions for every element. Trees are perhaps one of the most useful elements in any permaculture design. Some of the functions of a tree agriculture system include:
Harvest: From fruits to nuts to edible leaves and shoots to mushrooms, there are a number of food products that trees can provide.
Mulch: The leaf fall from deciduous trees provides some of the best mulch material for your farm and is fundamental in building overall soil health.
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Tree Crops
TREE CROPS
For thousands of years, farmers have generally differentiated forestry and agriculture. Forests were either left alone or planted and maintained as a source of fuel and building material. In the best of cases, certain trees also offered forage for livestock and other farm animals. The farm fields were generally kept clear of any trees because farming was relegated to nothing more than the planting and harvesting of annual (mostly grain) crops.
The only trees acceptable to farming were fruit bearing trees, and these were usually planted on areas of the farm where the terrain was too steep or otherwise unfit for the tillage needed for annual grain crops. With the ever more obvious problems related to the annual tillage of the soil and annual agriculture in general, many people have begun to consider the possibility of growing trees as crops.
THE BEGINNINGS OF FOREST AGRICULTURE
The idea of growing trees as crops is not a new one. Indigenous cultures around the world have been growing and managing diversified, edible forest ecosystems (food forests, in permaculture jargon) for thousands of years. From the multi-story tropical food forests of Mesoamerica to growing evidence that large swaths of the Amazon Jungle were actually human-controlled environments, indigenous peoples around the world have long understood the benefits of tree crops and perennial agriculture systems.
From the western perspective, however, it was J. Russell Smith in the 1920´s who first began considering the idea of trees as crops. Smith´s seminal work was published under the title of “Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture” in 1929. In this book, he looked at several farming cultures around the world that, instead of relying on the annual tillage of the soil for grain crops, actually depended on carefully managed forest ecosystems that provided an abundance of edible foodstuffs.
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