Foreword by E. F. Schumacher

Ten years ago I received a book with the title Tree Crops – A Permanent Agriculture, by J. Russell Smith that made sense because it did not merely state that ‘civilised man has marched across the face of the earth and left a desert in his footprints’ – a remark I had found confirmed in innumerable places throughout the world – but showed what could be done and what should be done.
Agriculture is for the plains, while silviculture is for the hills and mountains. When the plough invades the hills and mountains it destroys the land.
J. Russell Smith’s book made a tremendous impression on me. ‘Therefore, the crop-yielding tree offers the best medium for extending agriculture to the hills, to steep places, to rocky places, and to the lands where rainfall is deficient. New trees yielding annual crops need to be created for use on these four types of land.’
As my work took me all over the world, everywhere I could see it, thanks to Russell Smith: Agriculture in mountainous, rocky, or dry regions is a disaster, but trees are salvation. And ‘trees yielding annual crops’ did not have to be created; they existed already. But care and attention, selection and plant breeding, the application of methodical science, could improve them beyond our imagination.
I was fascinated with the work of Mr. P. A. Yeomans of Sydney, Australia, whose Keyline System seemed to me to possess the perfect beauty of truth.
All my life has been a journey of discovery of the generosity of nature. Traveling through India, I came to the conclusion that there was no salvation for India except through trees. There are trees for almost all human needs.
One of the greatest teachers of India was the Buddha who included in his teaching the obligation of every good Buddhist that he should plant and see to the establishment of one tree at least every five years. As long as this was observed, the whole large area of India was covered with trees, free of dust, with plenty of water, plenty of shade, plenty of food and materials.
Just imagine you could establish an ideology which made it obligatory for every able-bodied person in India, man, woman, and child, to do that little thing – to plant and see to the establishment of one tree a year, five years running.
This, in a five-year period, would give you 2,000 million established trees. Anyone can work it out on the back of an envelope that the economic value of such an enterprise, intelligently conducted, would be greater than anything that has ever been promised by any of India’s five-year plans.
It could be done without a penny of foreign aid; there is no problem of savings and investment. It would produce foodstuffs, fibres, building material, shade, water, almost anything that man really needs.
Finally, as a ‘fuel economist’, I should like to say that a most marvelous, three-dimensional, incredibly efficient contrivance already exists, more wonderful than anything man can make – the TREE. Agriculture collects solar energy two dimensionally; but silviculture collects it three-dimensionally. This, surely, is ‘the wave of the future.’
I do not think the authors of this book overstate their case when they say: ‘Of the world’s surface, only eight to ten per cent is at present used for food production. With the aid of trees, at least three quarters of the earth could supply human needs, not only of food but of clothing, fuel, shelter and other basic products.’
And they do not fail to add that wild life could be conserved, pollution decreased, and the beauty of many landscapes enhanced. This is the way, or at least one of the ways, to spiritual, moral, and cultural regeneration.

Introduction by J. Sholto Douglas

Trees constitute one of mankind’s most important assets and play a vital part in the maintenance of our environment. Indeed without them life on our planet could not survive.
At the same time, forests can contribute appreciably to world food supplies provided proper exploitation, combined with satisfactory conservation, is carried out. Moreover trees can flourish and yield abundantly in many places where arable crops and field grains would fail to grow.
This book discusses the role of forests and tree crops in farming and offers detailed advice and information on various economic species, the use of their products for food and raw materials, planting techniques and suggestions and guidance for the layout and operation of schemes of forest farming.
The aim of the work is to encourage the adoption of multiple-usage methods and to foster the integration of forestry with farming to form one pattern of agri-silviculture, wherever this may be appropriate.
It has been written simply, but it contains enough technical material to serve the purposes of agriculturists and forester in all countries and conditions, and seeks to provide useful guidance and practical instructions for extension workers, planners, government departments, institutions concerned with development and research, and indeed all those interested in tree-growing, whether they be laymen or professionals.
It is hoped that this work may be especially valuable to the developing nations in whose territories exist vast stretches of virtually uncultivated and desert or wasted lands, as well as to the more advanced countries where great areas of presently marginal value still lie neglected or require reclamation for economic use.
If, by means of forest farming, world production of foodstuffs and raw materials can be increased substantially and, where appropriate, tree crops linked with industrial development, something of real significance will have been achieved, both for the better sustenance of mankind and for the preservation and enhancement of our environment.

Introduction to New Edition by J. Sholto Douglas, January 1984

Hunger and malnutrition still affect vast numbers of people, while extensive tracts of land remain in wasted and degraded condition. Agriculture, as practiced today, cannot supply, on an economic basis, enough food to satisfy the needs of the poor, especially in less developed countries.
Since the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme were established not long after the Second World War, huge sums have been expended on their agricultural and related schemes and projects. In addition there has been a flow of aid. Yet more people than ever before are currently suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
The official organizations have also failed to deal with the problems of severe droughts, land deterioration, falling food production, loss of essential tree cover and damage to the rural environment.
By cutting trees, removing the protective mantle guarding our lands, man is creating droughts and causing the failure of traditional agriculture, especially in regions where the balance of Nature is most delicate. Destroy the world’s forests and we shall be destroyed too.
Forest farming is not a panacea for all the problems of world hunger, but it can make a very substantial contribution to human well-being.
Food, fuel and shelter are essential. Tree crops, in conjunction with arable and livestock husbandry, can provide a goodly part of our needs.

Chapter 1: Re-vitalising the Rural Areas

The most urgent task facing mankind today is to find a comprehensive solution to the problems of hunger and malnutrition, with all the disease and misery that they involve, by methods that do not overburden stocks of non-renewable resources, such as oil and minerals used for fertilizers, and do not impoverish the environment.
Vast areas of the world which are at present unproductive or under-productive – savannahs and virgin grasslands, jungles and marshes, barren uplands and rough grazings, deserts and farmlands abandoned owing to erosion – could be brought to life and made more hospitable to human settlement.
The ‘tool’ with the greatest potentials for feeding men and animals, for regenerating the soil, for restoring water-systems, for controlling floods and droughts, for creating more benevolent micro-climates and more comfortable and stimulating living conditions for humanity, is the tree.
Of the world’s surface, only eight to ten per cent is at present used for food production. Pioneer agriculturists and scientists have demonstrated the feasibility of growing food-yielding trees in the most unlikely locations – rocky mountainsides and deserts with an annual rainfall of only two to four inches.
With the aid of trees, at least three quarters of the earth could supply human needs, not only of food but of clothing, fuel, shelter and other basic products. At the same time wild-life could be conserved, pollution decreased, and the beauty of many landscapes enhanced, with consequent moral, spiritual and cultural benefits.

The production of essential foods by conventional methods is lagging so far behind the needs of the world’s rapidly growing population that even the advanced, industrialized, food-exporting countries are facing shortages of nutritional factors that are vital for health.
The toll of disease in the affluent countries which can be attributed to diet deficiencies or toxic elements in food or the environment is becoming comparable to the suffering caused by sheer malnutrition in the poorer countries.
There are few people on earth whose health and happiness could not be enhanced if they had access to a comprehensive, balanced, natural diet consisting largely of fresh products eaten direct from soil or tree.
At present, agriculture in most parts of the world is virtually exclusively geared to cereal growing and/or livestock rearing by conventional means.
Cereals and annual leguminous crops demand annual cultivations which are enormously expensive in labour or machinery, require large inputs of water and fertilizers, and are extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather.
Through over-grazing, many regions, especially in the Sahel-Sudan zone of Africa, are degenerating into desert.
In the wealthier countries, livestock production, whether by traditional methods or modern factory farming systems, constitutes a serious drain on world stocks of cereals and protein needed for direct feeding to human beings.
The ‘Green Revolution’ – the breeding of high-yielding, hybrid cereals – heralded in the sixties as foreshadowing the end of the world food problem, has proved a disastrous failure in countries that have found themselves unable to afford the enormous fertilizer inputs that the new varieties demand. The new varieties also demand vast quantities of water.
In the light of the conspicuous failure of conventional agriculture to fulfill the nutritional needs of the world’s rapidly growing population, far-sighted agronomists in many countries are turning their attention to the numerous advantages of tree crops.
Trees offer the possibility of far higher food yields per acre. Whereas livestock rearing in temperate regions produces an average of about two hundredweight of meat per acre and cereal growing an average of about one and a half tons per acre, apple trees can yield at least seven tons per acre, while leguminous trees can provide fifteen to twenty tons of cereal-equivalent.
In tropical areas, and under conditions of multiple cropping – where trees are interplanted with vines, vegetables or cereals – far higher yields can be expected.
As a ‘machine’ for supplying the necessary factors for sustaining human and animal life, the tee, with its deep, ever-questing roots, seeking out the riches of the subsoil, and its mass of foliage high in the air, utilizing atmospheric minerals and solar radiation by the scientific process of photosynthesis, is far more efficient than any system devised by man.
Trees can tolerate conditions in which every other form of food production would be impossible, such as steep, rocky mountainsides.
Olives and carobs can be planted in the clefts of rocks where no soil at all is apparent; their roots will penetrate deep into the heart of a hillside until they find the nutritional elements they require.
Certain trees have roots which can penetrate as much as several hundred feet into the subsoil and rocky sub-strata in their search for subterranean water. The almond can survive and flourish in apparently waterless conditions where all other crops fail.
With their capacity for storing water for long periods, some species of trees and shrubs can survive extended droughts that kill all other forms of vegetable life.
Tree plantations are able to raise the entire water-table over a wide area, thus bringing the possibilities of conventional agriculture and horticulture to regions where such activities had been considered out of the question.
The water taken up by trees from the subsoil is transpired into the atmosphere and falls as rain. A single Eucalyptus tree forty feet high transpired eighty gallons of water a day.
Tree plantations also attract rain clouds and cause them to shed their loads, so that extensive tree growing can make a substantial contribution to the annual rainfall of a drought-ridden area.
Trees can be found which will tolerate both the rarefied air of great heights and the polluted atmosphere of industrial cities. Apple orchards have been established at heights of over 12,000 feet in Tibet and a honey locust was found in foggy London.
Better than any other crop, trees could supply the younger generation’s demand for self-sufficiency. Many suburban areas could produce more food than open countryside if the full tree-growing potentialities of private gardens were exploited.
Trees can be grown on the smallest or the largest scale; they are far less demanding in energy, machinery or irrigation than conventional agriculture, and far from damaging the environment, they conserve and improve both soil and water resources and purify the atmosphere.
In the 1930’s Toyohiko Kagawa recognized the necessity for restoring tree cover, suggested planting walnuts, the nuts to be used to feed pigs which could be sold as a source of cash income. The system became known as ‘forest farming’ or ‘three-dimensional forestry’, the three dimensions being conservation, tree crops and livestock.
The concept was used in the semi-arid area of the middle Limpopo valley in South Africa where the carob and algarroba, both of which yield large crops of edible beans which, when ground into meal, are excellent for cattle fodder and human food.
The general pattern of three-dimensional forestry is to have large belts or blocks of economic trees interspersed with narrower grazing strips of grasses or other herbage along which move herds of livestock, fed from the woodlands, and producing meat, milk, eggs, wool and other items.
The manure of the animals is returned to the soil and encourages healthy and vigorous growth of plants, thus reducing the need for bought-in fertilizers to a minimum.
Three dimensional forestry offers more than a system for satisfying man’s basic needs of food, fuel and other essentials. It offers a new way of life, which could provide rewarding and purposeful occupations for large populations.
By offering new schemes of land development the influx into the cities could be checked, and new, vital rural civilizations and cultures created.
E. F. Schumacher, in a speech in 1966, said: “The central economic task of mankind, at this juncture, is to build up an efficient and satisfactory way of life in rural areas, to achieve an agro-industrial structure which conquers rural unemployment, stops rural decay, and arrests the seemingly irresistible drift of destitute people from the countryside into the big cities, already overcrowded and rapidly becoming unmanageable.” Forest farming could make a considerable contribution to the fulfillment of this aim.

The crop-yielding tree

Foreword by E. F. Schumacher

Introduction to New Edition by J. Sholto Douglas, January 1984

Chapter 1: Re-vitalising the Rural Areas

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