The other day some students at The College of New
Jersey where I teach chemistry part time helped me plant a little grove of hazelnut
trees. Here we are after having finished
the job. We did this to help advance the
idea of permaculture; specifically in the form of some 15 hazelnut trees
specially developed to thrive in Eastern U.S. and donated to us by Rutgers
University.
Why permaculture?
There is little that is truly natural about modern
agriculture. Most crop systems involve
mechanically tearing open the soil, planting crops that are not usually native
to a region, and caring for, harvesting, and processing these crops with methods
that are typically energy- and water-intensive and sometimes chemical-intensive.
Modern industrialized agriculture is
hugely productive of food and fiber, but when poorly managed, it can do major
harm to soils, remove wetlands and forests, cause grasslands to become deserts,
deplete groundwater, reduce biodiversity, and pollute air, water, and
land. Efforts to make agriculture more
sustainable include organic and related farming systems and the growing
permaculture movement.
Permaculture is a system of agricultural design that
is based on plants and growing patterns that are similar to those of natural ecosystems
in a given region. An important feature
of natural ecosystems is their relative permanence. Unlike typical agricultural
systems based on annual crops such as grains, beans, and vegetables, and
livestock fed by these annual crops, natural ecosystems do not need human
attention and input. Permaculture attempts
to mimic natural systems while at the same time producing crops valuable to
humanity. Permaculture crops are
typically long-lived or even perennial. Such
crops can include perennial grains, such as those under development at the Land
Institute in Salina, Kansas: https://landinstitute.org/ Other relatively perennial food crops are
trees that bear fruits and nuts. A
promising nut crop for the Eastern U.S. is the hazelnut. Hazelnuts
can produce more protein and more vegetable oil per acre than corn or soybeans.
Once established, hazelnuts can thrive for years with little need for
pesticides and other inputs. There is a
strong demand for hazelnuts by consumers, including large food processors; they
could prove to be a high value crop.
Most hazelnuts available today are grown in Europe,
and are varieties of Corylus avellana. Unfortunately, when these varieties are planted
in the Eastern U.S. they typically succumb to eastern filbert blight, an
endemic fungus disease to which the native North American hazelnut, Corylus americana, is resistant. Although the native hazelnut readily grows in
this region, the nuts it produces are small, difficult to shell, and have
little flavor. The trees in this
planting have been bred to resist filbert blight and grow vigorously in this
region and to also produce large and tasty nuts that should be highly
marketable. They have been chosen from disease-resistant
stock selected from thousands of Corylus
avellana trees and grafted onto hardy rootstocks under the direction of Dr.
Thomas Molnar, of Rutgers University’s Department of Plant Biology and
Pathology. More on the Rutgers program
is available at http://agproducts.rutgers.edu/hazelnuts/
