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Is it best that our food is Local and Organic or Big and Conventional? Our view is “Both, and..” We don’t come to the table with a bias, except that good farming like good food comes in all shapes and sizes. Farm to Table Talk explores issues and the growing interest in the story of how and where the food on our tables is produced, processed and marketed. The host, Rodger Wasson is a food and agriculture veteran. Although he was the first of his family to leave the grain and livestock farm a ...
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#25 Low cost and highly productive chestnut agroforestry systems with Tom Wahl
Manage episode 297850244 series 2777935
By Dimitri Tsitos & Etienne Compagnon, Dimitri Tsitos, and Etienne Compagnon. Discovered by Player FM and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Player FM, and audio is streamed directly from their servers. Hit the Subscribe button to track updates in Player FM, or paste the feed URL into other podcast apps.
We have an extremely practical conversation with Tom Wahl, co-founder of the Red Fern Farm, convincing us he has developed a very functional and economic system. The team there has chosen a variety of rustic crops that need little care, are high in demand, and picked by the customers themselves. Planted on fantastic soil for growing trees and you have a system where all Tom and his team need to do is 'mow the grass'. In the interview we focused on chestnuts, his main crop, looking at why the economics make it a no brainer, and finish off talking about ground cover management and woodchips. We hope you end up as inspired we did.
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
02:15 - Introduction to a low input farm model
13:10 - Tom understanding of agroforestry and imitating a savannah biome
17:40 - orchard architecture, spacing and competition between species
25:50 - Chestnut production and potential
30:30 - Integrating animals in the orchard
52:30 - Why is chestnut so interesting economically?
59:40 - Thoughts on mechanising chestnut harvest
01:02:30 - Characteristics that make a crop profitable
01:05:20 - The potential of chestnut as a staple
01:09:25 - U-pick as a commercialisation strategy and some more economics
01:18:30 - The honey berries experiment
01:21:20 - Managing the ground cover and comments on woodchips
• RESOURCES
Presentation discussed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAf1lUrqSq4
https://www.facebook.com/redfernfarm.iowa
• GET IN TOUCH www.regenerativeagroforestry.org
• SUPPORT US www.gumroad.com/regenagroforestry
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