Category talk:Open Source Permaculture
Perennial agriculture needs to be the backbone of any deeply resilient sustainable form of agriculture. Unfortunately though most of the genetic development has been done on annual grains as the agriculutural backbone, and we need to change this quickly. Perhaps the best way to go about rapidly honing in perennial food production systems is through a coordinated open source/bit torrent approach. How does this look in practice? Here are some initial ideas I have.
-OSE regional nodes that serve as genetic centers. -Working knowledge of best ways to propagate perennials in forms existing at hubs, with knowledge propagated via videos and wiki. -Breeding protocol to develop new higher producing, better tasting, more resistant ect. in parallel. -Wild or fallow land protocol in conjunction with smart phone gps app to track location and results of plantings.
This sort of approach can be done on almost any potential perennial, and it should be done on many as we need to farm and develop an ecosystems natural capabilities, rather than destroy it with chemical monocropping. Just like OSE GVCS we need to limit our focus though on what crops are developed and maintained first in the gene pool, until a sufficient number of people are around to handle great numbers of diversity.
American hazelnuts and Hybrid Chestnuts are two perennials I think that the Midwest and Eastern parts of the USA would do well to first focus on developing. They both have good production/acre development capabilities, and excellent nutrition profiles. Additionally they could act as direct corn and soybean replacement since they are similar in respective fat, carbohydrate, and protein profiles.
There is currently a developed open breeding protocol for hybrid hazelnuts http://midwesthazelnuts.org/about-hip.html, this is unique program since tthey basically started with a wild stock a short period ago. There are many private nurseries grooing and breeding Hybrid Chestnuts on there own, but no open program in existence.
With regards to hazel processing, on a large scale it is successfully developed in europe and a few large processors in the USA. On a small scale I know of designs available for open use for huskers, shellers, sorters, and separators.
