Not sure quite how we can use these ideas, but here's a 15 minute film which should cheer the most miserable farmer up:
It's only going to get worse...the Hidden Half of Nature book has just turned up in this mornings post (and we all know who to blame for that...)@martian I do worry about the sort of stuff you are watching and reading, you do know that GM is going to feed the world and save the planet, and not this eco biology guff don't you?
really interesting video that, bit of a lightbulb moment when they mention pruning increasing biological activity of roots ! Is this explanation of the "golden hoof" that livestock being beyond the soluble nutrition the alos produce ? ie grazing = pruning = more biomass and root biological production ?
even happier my sheep are half eating cover crops now !
My son is on the Hidden Half at Moment, he Has it on audio book.
Says it's not easy but one of the best books he has had on the subject.
Agroforestry (I know) we have even started making enquiries.
That was the lightbulb moment for me too. I think you are right here...one of the reasons mob grazing works so much better at feeding the soil than grazing animals under a set stocking regime: the grazed plants lose interest in putting too much into the soil when they are constantly being nibbled, compared with beng allowed to grow up tall and then attacked.really interesting video that, bit of a lightbulb moment when they mention pruning increasing biological activity of roots ! Is this explanation of the "golden hoof" that livestock being beyond the soluble nutrition the alos produce ? ie grazing = pruning = more biomass and root biological production ?
even happier my sheep are half eating cover crops now !
Interesting though that there didn't appear to much livestock on those farms in the video. Prunning was done with chainsaws rather than using giraffes / some living pruning machine. I wonder in order to make it more mechanised whether going along the tree rows with a hedgecutter flail / circular saw could make the process quicker.
Stephen Briggs was campaigning hard a couple of years ago for the rpa to acknowledge agroforestry under the bps. he didn't pull it off and I cant remember the details of why it wasn't allowed. some sort of double funding worry I suspect?I wonder how on earth you'd deal with agroforestry on the BPS forms. "It's sort of a wood, but we're also growing bannans and there's the odd alpaca wondering around in the field too. What cropping code should I use for that?"
sounds really interesting it would be interesting to know the f:b ratio in his soil? how about Christmas trees Simon?
Wakelyns is the most beautiful farm I've ever visited and Prof Wolfe is a gent. I'd happily move there now and skip happily through the alley crops. Money be damned. It just feels right. I've been obsessed with coming up with a similar solution for my own farm ever since. I think I'm getting some kind of concept ready to implement, but like you said a lot of work involved in direct marketing. My plan is to integrate livestock into the system too. And possibly tourism...I went to Wakelyns Farm a couple of years ago where Prof Martin Wolfe is experimenting with agroforestry. Main reason for going was to look at his diverse cereal breeding programs but because this is all done in alleyways between rows of trees, it was a great way to see agrofrestry in action. I can't really explain it, and you certainly wouldn't be able to measure it, but there just seemed to be so much energy about the whole farm. It is an all organic system, but all the trees and crops between them were growing profusely without any help from outside inputs, no fertilisers obviously, nor were there any livestock or much spreading.
When you walk into a conventional field of wheat, you get the feeling that without regular spraying and fertilising, the whole lot would die; but at Wakelyns it seemed like everything would keep growing quite happily on it's own.
I have to say that visit made quite an impression on me and I would happily go out tomorrow and start planting rows of trees all over the farm but I have yet to come up with a decent tree based enterprise that would financially viable on it's own. Coppicing for fuel is the obvious one but with oil at $30 a barrel and still dropping, heating my farmhouse with kerosene is a lot easier and cheaper. So what else, apples, pears, plumbs, nuts? I don't know, they would need to be direct marketed as well to be profitable, sounds like a lot of work to me.
I don't think so just a matter of planting and waitingChristmas trees a possibility, I suppose. Do they need pruning?
Wakelyns is the most beautiful farm I've ever visited and Prof Wolfe is a gent. I'd happily move there now and skip happily through the alley crops. Money be damned. It just feels right. I've been obsessed with coming up with a similar solution for my own farm ever since. I think I'm getting some kind of concept ready to implement, but like you said a lot of work involved in direct marketing. My plan is to integrate livestock into the system too. And possibly tourism...
An extremely diverse range. Everthing from fruit, nuts, timber to fertility trees, living fenceposts, medicinal and herbage trees for cattle. Even xmas trees. The sky's the limit. You can sell mistletoe for £3 a sprig. The point is as farmers we are sitting on an asset we barely exploit selling wheat at a fraction over the cost of production when there are so many other things people want that will grow with no purchased inputs at all in a perennial system which constantly increases in diversity, complexity, wildlife, beauty and yes potential revenue streams. Packaging all this up in the right way is the trick and I'm not there yet. It might be impossible, but I'm hoping to give it a go. Basically the system would be based around silvopasture and permaculture ideas.So what sort of trees are going to plant Dan? Or is it a secret at the moment.