Plant The Trees

Planting trees? On farmland? But what about feeding the world? There’s a lot wrapped up in this question, and we’re here to bring you the frameworks and the data on how agroforestry can feed the world with caloric staple crops, ecosystem services, and financially successful farms.

Take a listen to this phenomenal interview with Dana Shapiro, CEO of the Hawai‘i Ulu Cooperative. Ulu is the Hawaiian word for Breadfruit, which is a tree crop starch that traveled across the Pacific Ocean in canoes, and can still grow straight out of lava rock. And the conversation got. good. and I think we did a solid job of profiling this case study in rebuilding a food system with agroforestry. Hawai‘i imports 90% of its food, while half its farmland is fallow. Meanwhile, Dana and her team are harvesting over 200,000 pounds of breadfruit every year, building a farm...

Today’s guest is Austin Unruh of Trees For Graziers, who is a silvopasture and agroforestry practitioner who I’ve known for about seven years now. He does phenomenal work planting trees for water quality and cattle shade, and shatters the tradeoff between the two. We talked tree species, planting techniques, and a whole lot more. 

Silvopasture is the intentional integration of trees, forage, and livestock, and Northern Argentina boasts over 200,000 acres of plantation silvopasture. If we’re going to make more silvopasture happen in the United States, it’s good to learn from similar climates, even if they’re in the Southern Hemisphere.
In this episode, we talk to Luis Colcombet, who is a silvopasture veteran, and an agroforestry agronomist and scientist with INTA in Argentina. He’s been working in silvopasture for decades, with pine, eucalyptus, poplar, and more.

Argentina is full of agroforestry. From 200,000 acres of silvopasture across the northeast, to thousands of miles of windbreaks in Patagonia, to shade-grown yerba mate, trees on farms just make sense. It's incredibly helpful to compare agroforestry systems across different climates and different economies, and we can learn a great deal about our own climate and agroforestry through the lens and the experience of another unique but similar region.

Here we have our first Australian on the Plant The Trees Podcast.

I first met Darren Doherty at a Keyline agroforestry course in Iowa City in 2014. Back then we sometimes called it permaculture, but you could say that sphere was starving for pragmatism. How could we add financial realism to a socially-inclined ecological agriculture?  There are so many things we can do on a landscape, but where do we start? And what goals and ends do we have? The Regrarians platform gives extremely thorough, but flexible guidelines for how to plan landscapes for regenerative agriculture. It’s a m...

When we try to transform the world’s distressed or abandoned farmland, we'll come across a massive leverage point. That can be a new technology. Or it can be a tree species. Today we’re going to the country of Hungary to focus on a very unique tree. It grows fast, fixes nitrogen, and produces timber that rivals tropical hardwoods in strength and durability. In Hungary, it’s a species that’s woven into songs, poetry, and everyday life — but in parts of Europe and even its native landscape, it’s been labeled “invasive.” But invasive to when and to what conditio...

I’ve traveled to Hungary on five separate occasions, to learn more about black locust silviculture. Hungary grows 1 million acres of locust dominant forest and forest plantations, so it’s the right place for Robinia immersion.

The key to healthier livestock, resilient farms, and strong rural economies is found where trees and livestock intersect.

Today’s guest has spent over 30 year making the case, in real life, that silvopasture isn’t just a concept you see in a textbook — and that it’s a relevant part of a multifaceted agricultural economy. From planting black walnut and black locust on a New York hayfield in the 1980s, to regenerating degraded rangelands in Argentina into thriving silvopastures that feed cattle and communities, Brett has learned what it takes to make trees and grazing work, and he is he...

Black locust, Robinia pseudoacacia, is extremely unique. It’s the only fast-growing rot-resistant hardwood, native to the eastern United States. In this episode we’ll dive into how it grows, what the wood is used for, and the culture surrounding this phenomenal tree.

Welcome to the Plant The Trees podcast! You may have heard that money doesn't grow on trees, but it totally does through a practice called agroforestry. In this podcast, we'll explore the ins-and-out and benefits of agroforestry, how people are putting it into practice around the world, and how you can do it on your own land.