Land required for vegan self sufficiency- questions & food for thought...
Graham Burnett
vegan lists, composed in response to a question I was originally asked off
list. It is partly informed by some of the issues that got raised during
'the vegan wars' here, so isn't an attempt to resurrect them, but to
hopefully synthesise some of the more constructive points that came out of
that...
The checklist might be useful in other contexts as well at least as a
starting point for thinking about some issues that might need to be
considered...
-----------------------------------------------------------
How much land does a vegan require to be self sufficient in food?
An often quoted figure, attributed to the Vegan Society, is that one person
on a
plant based diet could be self
sufficient on one fifth of an acre of land.
However I'm not so sure how helpful such a figure is- it's one of those 'how
long is a piece of string' type questions-
There are many variables to take into account, here's a few I can think of;
What is the land quality? What type of soil do you have? What condition is
it in?
What's it's aspect? Sun paths at different times of year?
Are you on a slope? How steep?
What are your first and last frost dates?
Do you have an independant water supply? What irrigation techniques do you
plan to use?
Is it 'virgin' land that requires clearing and initial cultivating?
Any pollutants or contamination that need to be dealt with?
What weather patterns do you encounter?
Prevailing winds? How exposed are you?
In what part of the country/world are you intending to grow?
Do you intend to add season extending structures such as polytunnels &
greenhouses?
What do you want to grow? Have you audited/analysed the nutritional (eg,
protien,
carbohydrate, fibre, mineral, vitamins (including vitamin B12))contents of
your
chosen crops? Which are heavy feeders, which are light feeders?
Will you be planting annuals or perennials (including tree crops)?
What do you want to eat? What do you like?
Do you have a big appetite?
Are you a raw food vegan?
If not, have you factored in the land/energy required to produce the fuel to
cook
your food?
What's your lifestyle? How much time/energy do you have? Other commitments?
How fit are you?
Do you enjoy gardening?
How intensively do you intend to manage the land?
Are you using machinery/power tools?
If so have you factored in the land/energy required to produce and fuel such
equipment?
How experienced/knowledgable are you as regards food growing?
Are you using permaculture techniques and strategies such as increasing
edge,
stacking, succession, using multifunctional plantings, using zonal planning,
etc,
etc?
Are you returning your own wastes (ie, humanure) to the soil?
Are you growing organically?
If so, are you growing vegan organically? Have you factored in space needed
for compost crops and green manures?
Are you growing 'conventional' organically? Have you factored in the land
required to graze cattle or grow fodder in order to obtain their manure
outputs? What about transporting it to your land (dung miles???)?
If neither, have you factored in the 'embodied energy' and land needed to
produce the various chemicals & pesticides you intend to add?
---------------------------------------------------------
One fifth of an acre of prime fertile rich agricultural soil in a sheltered
river valley with a long growing season, worked by a young, strong, fit,
experienced
person 7 days a week following a well integrated and thought out cropping
plan, is going to be a very different proposition to one fifth of an acre of
exposed, thin and acidic Welsh hillside being managed by say, a
single parent suffering from health problems and trying fit growing
activities in
with things like holding down
a job, commuting, raising a family, etc, etc!
Two people managing two fifths of an acre, or five people managing one acre
are
completely different scenarios again, whatever the land's condition!
Then there are all those other human needs- clothing, shelter,
warmth, transport (not to mention emotional needs including the company of
others and rest!!)
Sometimes perhaps we need to be a little careful about quoting figures
without
placing them in any sort of context... Just some food for thought, I would
welcome
any responses or comments...
Graham Burnett
www.landandliberty.co.uk
PS. I've produced a small checklist of issues to think about when 'reading
your
land' at http://pages.unisonfree.net/gburnett/SEEOG/page13.html
There's some other possibly useful checklists at
http://pages.unisonfree.net/gburnett/SEEOG/page4.html
Janet Baraclough
from "Graham Burnett" <graham...@blurgyonder.co.uk> contains
these words:
> Hi all at alt.pc... this is a copy of a post I've just sent to some of the
> vegan lists, composed in response to a question I was originally asked off
> list. It is partly informed by some of the issues that got raised during
> 'the vegan wars' here, so isn't an attempt to resurrect them, but to
> hopefully synthesise some of the more constructive points that came out of
> that...
> The checklist might be useful in other contexts as well at least as a
> starting point for thinking about some issues that might need to be
> considered...
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> How much land does a vegan require to be self sufficient in food?
> An often quoted figure, attributed to the Vegan Society, is that one person
> on a
> plant based diet could be self
> sufficient on one fifth of an acre of land.
> However I'm not so sure how helpful such a figure is- it's one of those 'how
> long is a piece of string' type questions-
Hi Graham.. I've snipped for brevity.
Assuming the Vegan Society is in Britain, I'd be very surprised if
that space was enough. I lived in rural Herefordshire which would
probably be a very close match to the " prime fertile rich
agricultural soil in a sheltered river valley with a long growing
season," you suggested as an optimum, and have seen people there
producing an awful lot of their own food on plots around that
size...but still nowhere near self sufficient in it, even when they
were keeping rabbits or chickens for protein.And of course, they were
not producing their own cooking fuel, clothing fibre or footwear so
were far from self-sufficient overall.
I feel, you might disagree, some cereals such as oats, wheat or
barley would be essential to provide easily stored calories, fibre
and carbohydrates for winter diet...to make flour, or porridge or
brose.A fifth of an acre is too small to allow for them.
In the UK, what provenly reliable crop could supply a year-round
quantity of vegan-acceptable protein, and fat, from part of a fifth
of an acre? I'm not being controversial, but since the vegan society
thinks this is possible, I'd like to hear what their proposal is.
Janet
Graham Burnett
>
> In the UK, what provenly reliable crop could supply a year-round
> quantity of vegan-acceptable protein, and fat, from part of a fifth
> of an acre? I'm not being controversial, but since the vegan society
> thinks this is possible, I'd like to hear what their proposal is.
Precisely! The point I was making is that figures like one 'fifth of an
acre' or whatever are actually pretty meaningless without being placed into
some sort of context about what it is you intend to grow and on what quality
land, or indeed what your personal requirements are...
Cheers, Graham
www.landandliberty.co.uk
floot
enough to feed one vegan.
1/5 of an acre.... 2904 sq feet........ or approx 30 x 30metres..... it's
all about inputs.
An hydroponic set up would happily do it and more. It would make a vegan
food sufficient with no fruit or nuts with the exception perhaps of berries.
Given a suitable 12 month growing season.
During the course of my 'studies'.... I looked up a site about imperial
measurements [I prefer imperial but happily use both]. The site was
http://www.headley1.demon.co.uk/histdate/measures.htm and here it describes
a 'hide' or 120 acres as being sufficient for a family. That would have
meant entire sufficiency along permaculture lines as it was practised
wayback then but they nearly all produced their own building materials,
fibre, fuel, transport etc etc.
Not that I added much but the comment that 'how long is a piece of string'
pretty much summed it up.
1/5 acre where I live in the dry tropics would amount to 1mll/per sq metre =
1 litre... so with my rainfall i could catch about 27000 litres of water
[36" x25.4mm =756 multiply by catchment area of 30m2 equals 27000
approx]..... not enough water. I would need more land.
Self sufficiency, even for vegans should be considered in its entirety.
I knew a man who lived at our airport who kept his family entirely in greens
etc from a hydroponic set up he built on a 7' x 5' box trailer. His wife
wouldnt let him have a vegie garden!. So he had to move this trailer around
so it didnt kill her lawn.
Floot
Fran
> How much land does a vegan require to be self sufficient in food?
>
> one person on a plant based diet could be self
> sufficient on one fifth of an acre of land.
I would think that this would be an impossibility but it depends on what you
mean by self sufficient. Is that supposed to be long term or just for a
season or two?
If you're talking ss with several bags of rice and wheat in the pantry a
good store of seeds and only want to survive for a season then yes. Longer
than that, no pantry items, want to keep the land in good heart and to eat a
varied diet and to supply all food needs then not a hope in hell.
Fran
Fran
> How much land does a vegan require to be self sufficient in food?
>
> one person on a plant based diet could be self
> sufficient on one fifth of an acre of land.
I would think that this would be an impossibility but it depends on what you
mean by self sufficient. Is that supposed to be long term or just for a
season or two?
If you're talking ss with several bags of rice and wheat in the pantry a
good store of seeds and only want to survive for a season then yes. Longer
than that, no pantry items, want to keep the land in good heart and to eat a
varied diet and to supply all food needs then I'd say there is not a hope in
hell.
Fran
Graham Burnett
with permission.
The link to Albie Miles' stuff is well worth checking out...
Graham
"I haven't come across a good permaculture answer to this question. I'd
like to
see some for different questions, from garden of eden quality land and
growing
conditions to near desert with depleted soil.
Biointensive gardeners have worked on the question some. Some of the
results
are in the book One Circle: How to Grow a Complete Diet in Less Than 1000
Square Feet, by David Duhon. Their prototype diets are designed for the
Pacific Northwest of the US, so the growing conditions match fairly well
for much of the UK. The one place I have found that reliably has the book
is http://www.bountifulgardens.org . They also have the Mexican and
Kenyan diet plan pamphlets mentioned below.
The smallest diet they came up with was for a woman(125 pound) and used 550
square
feet in an 8 month growing season. All the nutritional requirements were
met with potatoes, sunflower seeds, onions, turnips(root and greens),
parsnips and garlic.
The smallest area for a man(150 pound) uses 855 square feet. The
nutritional
requirements were met with filberts(hazelnuts), potatoes, collards,
parsnips, and garlic.
To get a more appealing diet for a couple using 2800 square feet together,
the crops they used were wheat, garlic, sunflower seeds, potatoes,
onions, parsley, turnips, collards, parsnips, and filberts.
They have also come up with some alternate designs, and some designs
which use warmer climate crops for Mexico and Kenya.
An advantage of several people working together is that you can get more
variety, especially if you would like to have some tree fruits.
In his work, as well as related work by John Jeavons, who wrote
How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible on
less land than you can imagine(6th ed should be out soon), they do give
information
about creating and maintaining soil fertility which requires some
additional land.
Improvement can be gained by using the season extension techniques of
Eliot Coleman. Although this requires extra infrastructure in terms of
green house and row cover, it spreads out
the labor of harvest time, much more evenly, and keeps food fresh since
it can be harvested daily. It also doesn't require any fuel to heat the
greenhouse.
Similarly to Graham, I'd like to see the self-sufficiency issues extended
to include
the items he listed plus more such as
Fuel for heat, transportation, soap making, clothes making,
dehydrating food if needed in climate, light etc
Wood for repair, share of new building, furniture, toys, tools
Medicinal, dye, culinary herbs
Additional planned food to share with guests, account for average wildlife
damage,
stockpile for bad years, and swap with people who grow other things
Consideration of extra calories that might be needed for an active
gardening
lifestyle
Food or other items for income
Cloth for clothes replacement as well as other cloth needs
Paper, toilet paper
Fibers or other items for containers, house hold items, craft items for
family or sale
Oil crops for soap making
Flowers for beauty and honey and beeswax(I realize some vegans use honey
and beeswax
and others consider it nonvegan)
Beyond the basics, one might also include fuel for generating electricity or
items to generate income to buy items that help generate electricity.
Crops might vary widely depending on how one is solving an issue.
For instance if you are using boats for transportation, growing wood and
waterproofing materials could be different from growing bamboo for
a bicycle frame plus some cash crops to buy the rims and tires.
A lot of thought can be put into what you could grow to make the items
you use every day or what might be grown to get cash to get the
items that can't be grown in your area when there is not a good growable
alternative.
It's also interesting to approach the question from another angle. Say
I have 1/4 acre of land around my house. How much of my food, fuel,
and compost crops can I grow for my family? And I would focus on
these since they are daily needs. I can't find my notes, but I think
that the average person needs about 2 pounds of cotton per year
to replace their clothes, so growing this somewhere else, and
shipping it would have less of an effect than shipping the day's
food supply every day.
Another thing to look at is what positive side effects there might be
by growing most of one's own food. It could be that some of the
things needed now wouldn't be needed with a different lifestyle.
For instance a person planning might ask, "What kind of herbs
could I grow to substitute for migraine medication?" But what if
they looked at a broader picture and asked a different question?
"What if I gardened, ate healthy, exercised, worked for a health-
oriented non-abusive boss 2 days a week, and didn't have migraines...
what would I plant under those conditions?"
Or if I ate 60% of my food raw instead of 40%, how much less fuel
would I need to grow?
To me it's important to look at what you are trying to replace.
It can be important to choose the level of replacement. For instance
if a person is working to replace the unhealthy typical western diet with
an unhealthy similar vegan version, they are likely to be doing less
environmental and personal damage yet they could improve this greatly
and likely use a smaller amount of land. For example, deep fried tempeh
with a side order of french fries is a level of improvement over a
cheeseburger and fries. Vegetable bean soup could improve things
to another level. Most vegans are aware of the land saved by using
plants for food rather than animals. But the tempeh and fries meal would
take more resources than
carefully chosen ingredients for a vegetable bean soup. One reason for
this is that oil crops tend to take large amounts of land. Plus a person
who eats lots of deep fried tempeh with fries tends to need more
medical resources than a person who eats healthier meals.
Some people who are looking at more aspects of the amount of land it
takes to live a vegan lifestyle are Jim Merkel and Erica Sherwood.
At present they are growing some of their food, and trying to buy
most of it locally, transporting it by bicycle. Info on their
work is at http://www.globallivingproject.org/ .
The only person I know of who has tried to grow a complete vegan diet
for a person and collect data on it is Albie Miles. A summary of the
data from one season is shared at http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html .
He used biointensive gardening methods.
Sharon
gord...@one.net"
Graham Burnett <graham...@blurgyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6dyD7.6687$Ey1.9...@news1.cableinet.net...
> Hi all at alt.pc... this is a copy of a post I've just sent to some of the
> vegan lists, composed in response to a question I was originally asked off
> list. It is partly informed by some of the issues that got raised during
<snip>
Graham Burnett
> Assuming the Vegan Society is in Britain, I'd be very surprised if
> that space was enough. I lived in rural Herefordshire which would
> probably be a very close match to the " prime fertile rich
> agricultural soil in a sheltered river valley with a long growing
> season," you suggested as an optimum, and have seen people there
> producing an awful lot of their own food on plots around that
> size...but still nowhere near self sufficient in it, even when they
> were keeping rabbits or chickens for protein.And of course, they were
> not producing their own cooking fuel, clothing fibre or footwear so
> were far from self-sufficient overall.
>
> I feel, you might disagree, some cereals such as oats, wheat or
> barley would be essential to provide easily stored calories, fibre
> and carbohydrates for winter diet...to make flour, or porridge or
> brose.A fifth of an acre is too small to allow for them.
>
> In the UK, what provenly reliable crop could supply a year-round
> quantity of vegan-acceptable protein, and fat, from part of a fifth
> of an acre? I'm not being controversial, but since the vegan society
> thinks this is possible, I'd like to hear what their proposal is.
Hi Janet-
I've also sent my piece by 'snail mail' to Kathleen Jannaway of Movement For
Compassionate Living, who I believe originally came up with the 'one fifth
of an acre' figure back in the 70's when she was part of the vegan society,
she may be able to cast some light on how she arrived at that figure, as it
does seem very optimistic to me.
Graham
www.landandliberty.co.uk
Janet Baraclough
> Here's an off list response that I recieved from Sharon Gordon, forwarded
> with permission. Some of the
> results
> are in the book One Circle: How to Grow a Complete Diet in Less Than 1000
> Square Feet, by David Duhon. Their prototype diets are designed for the
> Pacific Northwest of the US, so the growing conditions match fairly well
> for much of the UK.
Sorry, this is frequently quoted by Americans but is not true, and
causes no end of misunderstanding. It would be truer to say, the PNW
is the climatic area of the USA which, in USA terms, has relatively
damp mild winters and temperate summers..which makes it the area
least unlike the UK. But that's a very far cry from, it's like the
UK; or, what grows there will thrive here.
As Graham has already pointed out, self sufficiency theory is
virtually meaningless unless it focuses upon specifics and facts; so
I think its worth explaining the weakness of this false premise about
crop similarities between the UK/USA.
PNW and the UK are ..roughly..on the same latitude. As a small
island, the whole of the UK has a temperate maritime climate. The
western, coastal side of PNW also has a maritime climate of wet,
relatively mild winters, but no part of the UK recieves the 200 " of
rain pa, or 28ft snowfalls, which occur in PNW.The eastern side of
the PNW Cascades has a continental climate with drier, hotter summers
that the UK. Even a cloudy summer in PNW, has a **longer more
reliable** period of warm, ripening temperatures, than a sunny summer in UK.
IIRC, outdoor tomatoes and peach orchards are commercial crops in
PNW...neither possible in the UK. Just an example of how a wider
range of temperate fruit and nut trees ripen and crop far more
reliably in PNW.
The poster goes on to propose growing nuts (filberts) and sunflower
seeds as sole dietary sources of protein and fat.
In the UK, filberts were a traditional commercial crop of the
warmest,sunniest area of the south east coast..Kent. Hazels, a near
relative, are native throughout UK. Both need two successive warm
sunny summers to crop...the first to ripen flowering wood, and the
second to ripen the nuts that form on it. Most of the UK seldom has
two consecutive ripening summers. Consequently, only Kent, one tiny
bit of the UK, can rely on a good nut crop most summers: for the rest
of the country, nuts are sporadic seeders. Annual sunflowers, non
native, are similar; anyone in the UK can easily grow the flowers,
but not all parts of the country are able to ripen the seeds.
The implications for self sufficient vegans relying on a steady
annual crop of nuts and sunflower seeds for protein are obvious; this
isn't feasible in the majority of the UK. And for growers and PCers
in general.. studies and theories based on a particular climate,
can't be transposed to dissimilar ones.
Janet.
Fran
> The implications for self sufficient vegans relying on a steady
> annual crop of nuts and sunflower seeds for protein are obvious;
Wouldn't nuts and suflowers be pretty important for vegans for the necessary
fat content given that most of us get the bit we need from other sources
which vegans don't use? Iirc, children need much more fat for (brain???)
development than adults do.
Fran
Graham Burnett
> The message <OzPD7.3224$4x3.4...@news1.cableinet.net>
> from "Graham Burnett" <graham...@blurgyonder.co.uk> contains
> these words:
<snipped content>
Thanks Janet, I've forwarded your post to Sharon, also invited her to join
alt.pc so that she can respond directly. In the meantime I'll forwrd any
replies she might send to me
Graham
Graham Burnett
Fran <ma...@mak.com.au> wrote in message
news:9rq01q$va3ll$1...@ID-60053.news.dfncis.de...
Hi Fran,
My Vegan Sources Of Nutrition wallchart lists the following 'essential fat'
sources (just pops through to the kitchen...) "Vegetable oils, esp. soya,
corn, sunflowers, avocados, nuts, olive oil". It also mentions hemp and flax
oil. So we've got a mixture of things there, some can be grown in the Uk,
some not. There's not anything there that it would make sense to try and
grow or process on any sort of self-sufficient scale IMHO though. Some have
potential for development, which might be a good project for somebody in the
permaculture movement....
I've just dug out Permaculture magazine (UK) issues 15 & 16 which have a 2
part article on growing nuts in Britain by Ray Brown of Nutwood Nurseries, a
couple of extracts on the issue of climatic tolerance & possible potential
read;
Hazel; "Worldwide, hazels are very adaptable and some species grow within
sight of the arctic circle. in China, Canada & The UsA, these hardy species
have been used used in breeding programmes with high yielding varieities to
extend the range of hazel nut production. Wild cold hardy species like
Corylus americana have been crossed with commercial varieties to produce new
cold tolerant varieties..."
Chestnuts; "...grow well in the southern half of the UK, particularly on
slight acid soils. In general they require a warm summer to produce useful
size fruit. extensive stands of seedling trees in Norfolk, Staffordshire,
Gloucstershire and many other counties produce small but acceptable nuts
most years........ Various hybrids of the European, Japanese and American
chestnuts have been introduced to try to improve disease resistance, nut
size and extend the useful range of these trees."
Walnut; "The european walnut (Juglans regia) originated in Asia Minor and
evolved in 2 directions. The so called Persian Walnut........ requires hot
summers. The Carpathian walnut however, migrated through the Catrpathian
mountains of Hungary & poland. It is much more cold tolerant, and was
introduced to Canada where it has been selected for productivity, relatively
small size and self fertility."
In the second part of the article he lists some less usual nuts which have
the potential to be more productive in the UK, and would offer sources of
protien, essential fats, calcium and other nutrients in the vegan diet,
including;
Almond; Monkey puzzle; Hickory; ginkgo balbao; Pine Nuts & yellow horn.
Then there are also Beech nuts (too fiddly to be arsed with in my opinion as
a food source, but might make sense to harvest on a larger scale for their
oil) & Acorns (I've harvested & used these- rather glutinous & better mixed
with other nuts in roasts etc in my opinion, also their (oak) cropping habit
is unreliable, giving worthwhile yields only in 'mast years', although in
'Permaculture In a Nutshell' Patrick Whitefield writes of an oak that yields
a sweeter acorn and may have potential to crop more reliably (I don't have
the article to hand however)) .
There's an article (not in depth) on nuts in the UK from a vegan perspective
at http://www.btinternet.com/~bury_rd/nuts.htm
When I'm a bit richer I'd love to take out a sub and buy a few more
Agroforestry Research Trust publications...
In a way I think from a permaculture perspective the question shouldn't be
so much "how do we grow such & such a nut in the UK", more "how do we find
as many diverse ways as possible of providing x, y & z nutritional
requirements for human health & well being in the most sustainable,
earthright & self reliant methods possible", which opens up a much wider
range of possibilities for all of us, vegan or not. ('multiple back ups for
all functions' principle...)
BTW, what does iirc mean? I think I worked it once but now I've
forgotten....
Cheers for now
Graham
Graham Burnett
> I would think that this would be an impossibility but it depends on what
you
> mean by self sufficient. Is that supposed to be long term or just for a
> season or two?
> If you're talking ss with several bags of rice and wheat in the pantry a
> good store of seeds and only want to survive for a season then yes.
Longer
> than that, no pantry items, want to keep the land in good heart and to eat
a
> varied diet and to supply all food needs then not a hope in hell.
I've found a very good and readable article by Peter Harper of CAT called
'GROWING YOUR OWN- PROS AND CONS' which puts a nice sensible context on the
whole issue of self sufficiency. It doesn't seem to be on the net
unfortunately- I've just tried to scan it to OCR it & upload it, but
unfortunately my scanner seems to have gone tits up right now- unfortunate
cos it's well worth a look...
Anyway, the gist of what he's saying is that, yes, it probably is possible
to be 'self sufficient' in food ('Option A'), but basically a return to such
a peasent lifestyle would be a total drudge and forget having any other sort
of life or experiences
("There can be no messing about with wild foods, lawns, playspaces, or crops
that take 30 years to come into production- are you prepared for this?" ....
"Is this the BEST contribution your land time and money can make to saving
the planet? Is your garden a suitable space, or will it take more resources
to make it more productive than it will ever return? Would it in fact make a
better bird sanctuary? Is your time better spent campaigning for better
public transport or restoring a watershed?"...
"Your lifestyle will be so unusual that you will cut yourself off from 99%
of your fellow citizens. If it isn't, your food growing is not making a
large enough contribution to be worthwhile"....
"You will be denying custom to local commercial organic growers, who are
just as dedicated as you, and may be able to produce more efficiently. You
should perhaps ask yourself, what's so special about FOOD that you ought to
produce it yourself which doesn't apply to everything else in your life;
house and fittings, electricity, fuels, clothes, shoes, transport,
communications, medicine, tools, utensils, clothes, books, stationary... No
you cannot make all these things yourself. are you going to do without them?
If so, you are truly planning to be a peasent, and the best of luck. The
rest of humanity, regretably, will be travelling the other way")
Option B is 'Keep at it, but take it easy'; "Accept that the produce is
symbolic, a sacrament perhaps- your personal link with the earth; the work
gives you exercise amnd is excelent therapy; the veggies are better and
healthier than those you can buy; they are very convenient in the living
larder; it's a wonderful discipline and training for the children. You can
grow stuff Sainsburys never heard of and the stuff tastes marvelous"
Option C is 'Do something else with your garden' "Wildlife refuge, adventure
playground, research centre, volleyball pitch, zen retreat, waste treatment
facility......"
Option D is "what in practice most of will do- a mixture of all three..."
I like his attitude to economies of scale! Best of all his acknowledgement
in another article (on recycling household waste this time) that we are all
doing the best we can, no-one is perfect- "Good enough is good enough!"
Cheers
Graham
www.landandliberty.co.uk
Janet Baraclough
> I've just dug out Permaculture magazine (UK) issues 15 & 16 which have a 2
> part article on growing nuts in Britain by Ray Brown of Nutwood Nurseries, a
> couple of extracts on the issue of climatic tolerance & possible potential
> read;
The issue with hazels isn't the degree of winter cold..it's the
amount of wood-ripening heat.
Like oak and beech, they have seed years and none seed years.
Walnuts and sweet chestnuts are often discussed in
uk.rec.gardening; they don't produce nuts much further north than the
midlands...lack of sun/heat again.
> In the second part of the article he lists some less usual nuts which have
> the potential to be more productive in the UK, and would offer sources of
> protien, essential fats, calcium and other nutrients in the vegan diet,
> including;
> Almond; Monkey puzzle; Hickory; ginkgo balbao; Pine Nuts & yellow horn.
Almonds, like walnuts, are very susceptible to late frost...no good
for north. Araucana (monkey puzzle) are mostly single sex so usually
need two of the (hideous, imho) trees for cross pollination...then
the cones take three years to ripen. Ginkgo trees are also single sex
so you'd need two; females seldom fruit in the UK (summer temps
again)..but in the USA where they do, many cities ban the planting of
the female form because the crop smells so disgusting.
Hickory...also needs a continental summer climate to ripen flowering
and fruiting wood.
Pine nuts...if you have ever collected seed from pine cones in the UK
you will know how tiny and flimsy they are compared with the culinary
sort. Those come from species native to California, Arizona, Mexico,
southern states of USA...so need hot continental-climate summers to
set and ripen seed.
I suspect that the bottom line is that vegans in the UK will always
depend for protein, upon imported foods.
> BTW, what does iirc mean? I think I worked it once but now I've
> forgotten....
If I Remember Correctly...and AFAIK is As Far As I Know.
On a more positive note (see, I can manage that)...trawling through
the many sites introduced to this discussion has been very
interesting and has thrown up one of those pleasing little
serendipities.One of the "nut" sites mention Clive Simms as a UK
supplier of unusual fruit and nut trees. 18 years ago, Clive Simms
used to sell ornamental trees, specialising in a huge range of
unusual species and varieties of crataegus and sorbus (hawthorn and
rowan)..his favourite trees... all of which he grew from seed.I was
just starting out with a naked windswept hillside, very quickly got
hooked by their toughness and beauty, and bought a few from him. A
year or two later he rang me to say he was giving up on ornamentals
to concentrate on a more profitable market, had remembered that I had
a big space to fill and shared his taste in trees . He had just
lifted the last of that year's seedling rowans and hawthorns and had
put them in the post to me with his compliments in the hope I could
give them a good home :-). There were hundreds of them..maybe 30
different kinds, all about 6 " high. For years, I was giving away
more spares than I could use. The rest grew into my own woodland and
hedges. In autumn, this place is a mass of multi coloured fruit and
berries and this year, Clive's assorted species hawthorns have been
particularly spectacular, attracting huge flocks of birds.
One of the sites you listed, mentions that hawthorn berries are
edible and a source of Vitamin C. I didn't know that..so yesterday I
had a great sampling of the the Clive Simm hawthorns. Some of the
asian species taste best..they have much larger brighter berries than
our natives, and are always taken first by the birds. Palatable
rather than delicious (and the pips are too big to swallow) but good
enough to nibble...more survival/subsistence food than
self-sufficiency fodder.Next year I'll get those before the birds do
and make some jelly from them. The sad thing is that the labels have
long sice faded and I can only identify a couple by name !
Janet
Graham Burnett
<snip interesting points re climatic limitations to nut growing in the UK>
I must admit my knowledge of nut growing is nowhere near as deep as yours,
and nearly everything else I've seen seems to skirt around the points you
have raised. However surely there must be some scope for selective breeding
in order to increase their useful cropping range? Perhaps Phil Corbett has
some comments on this issue?
Nuts would surely still be a valuable food source in the South of the UK and
could be planted more widely in the areas in which they will do well.
> I suspect that the bottom line is that vegans in the UK will always
> depend for protein, upon imported foods.
Nuts are not the only source of protien however, heres a list I found at the
MCL site.
http://pages.unisonfree.net/mcl/home%20grown%20sources.htm
Theres plenty there that can be grown without too much difficulty, even
excluding nuts from the equation (which we're not, just saying they can't be
grown beyond a certain northerly point), especially if wider cropping (maybe
some selective breeding might be necessary for UK conditions) of what is
currently considered 'queer gear' (eg, quinoa and such like) were to be
adopted.
I still remain convinced that vegans could live self reliantly (as opposed
to self SUFFICIENTLY) in the UK without too many problems.
(I'm not saying here that everybody should be vegan BTW, just arguing that
there is no reason why a vegan lifestyle shouldn't be sustainable within the
UK.)
>
> > BTW, what does iirc mean? I think I worked it once but now I've
> > forgotten....
>
> If I Remember Correctly...and AFAIK is As Far As I Know.
Thanks!
>
> On a more positive note (see, I can manage that)...trawling through
> the many sites introduced to this discussion has been very
> interesting and has thrown up one of those pleasing little
> serendipities.One of the "nut" sites mention Clive Simms as a UK
> supplier of unusual fruit and nut trees. 18 years ago, Clive Simms
Clive Simms crops up in the Permaculture magazine quite often- he had an
interesting article on buffalo currants a couple of issues ago, I might try
them at the forest garden.
> One of the sites you listed, mentions that hawthorn berries are
> edible and a source of Vitamin C. I didn't know that..so yesterday I
> had a great sampling of the the Clive Simm hawthorns. Some of the
> asian species taste best..they have much larger brighter berries than
> our natives, and are always taken first by the birds. Palatable
> rather than delicious (and the pips are too big to swallow) but good
> enough to nibble...more survival/subsistence food than
> self-sufficiency fodder.Next year I'll get those before the birds do
> and make some jelly from them. The sad thing is that the labels have
> long sice faded and I can only identify a couple by name !
There is an interesting artickle about the edible uses of hawthorne at
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/crataegs.html
along with a piece on 'alternative fruits' (man) at
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/altfruit.html
Cheers for now,
Graham
www.landandliberty.co.uk
Graham Burnett
>
> <snip interesting points re climatic limitations to nut growing in the UK>
>
> I must admit my knowledge of nut growing is nowhere near as deep as yours,
> and nearly everything else I've seen seems to skirt around the points you
> have raised. However surely there must be some scope for selective
breeding
> in order to increase their useful cropping range? Perhaps Phil Corbett has
> some comments on this issue?
I had a good trawl through my books last night looking up the subject of
growing hazels, the only one that seems to even mention a northerly limit to
successful nut production is, ironically, a book advocating a vegan self
reliant UK, Kathleen Jannaway's 'abundant Living in The coming Age Of The
Tree', where she writes "In the UK we have hazel, beech and oak widespread
and sweet chestnuts in the south, all capable of yielding large crops of
nutritious seeds". she then goes on to say "I know a man who, 1000 feet up
in the Welsh hills gets, by careful selection and good husbandry, good crops
of hazel and walnuts".
Flora Britanica by Richard Maybe says that cob nuts were a staple of
prehistoric people, especially the Celts, and gives accounts of abundant
hazel crops occuring in Ireland (Cannola's Well nr. Tipperary), Wiltshire,
Hatfield Forest in Essex, Sussex, Northamptonshire and Cleveland. Nottingham
Cob (presumably from Nottingham??) is also known as 'Pearsons Prolific'
which suggests it crops well.
I have personally picked up a few pounds of hazels from the ground a few
years back when passing through Cheddar Gorge.
All of the books agree though that Kent is the home of the UK hazel nut,
apparently Brogdale has 44 varieties in it's collection. In 'How To Make A
Forest Garden' by Patrick Whitefield he rather worryingly states that from
3000 ha of hazels in Kent in 1913 there is now one single commercial grower
who is thinking of giving up. He states that the most serious limiting
factor on hazel growing is not soil or climate but the grey squirrel.
Interestingly, in Celtic legend, the cobnut was an emblem of wisdom- "sweet,
compacted and sustaining"- hence the saying "In a nutshell"
Cheers,
Graham
Fran
> I've found a very good and readable article by Peter Harper of CAT called
> 'GROWING YOUR OWN- PROS AND CONS'
>
> Anyway, the gist of what he's saying is that, yes, it probably is possible
> to be 'self sufficient' in food ('Option A'), but basically a return to
such
> a peasent lifestyle would be a total drudge and forget having any other
sort
> of life or experiences
I know that a few of us have wittered on here before about an Australian
writer called Jackie French. She consistently makes the same sort of
comment abot SS (but with some exceptions like coffee in our cold climate).
At one stage in her life she had to be almost SS because of extreme poverty
but she writes of how difficult that became when she contacted pneumonia -
people are quite prepared to go to the supermarket but they draw the line at
harvesting and storing crops etc etc.
> (snip of options for brevity)
> I like his attitude to economies of scale! Best of all his acknowledgement
> in another article (on recycling household waste this time) that we are
all
> doing the best we can, no-one is perfect- "Good enough is good enough!"
Yes, I agree - we all have other things that we need to be doing and can
only do what we can get around to. I have been flat labouring like a navvy
in the veg garden for weeks and it is still a weed filled mess! I have
things coming on all over the place (altho the 1st experimental tomatoe is
looking a bit sad - his cover gets taken off this week and the man crop goes
in so I hope there will be no more frosts).
I have also been doing a lot more reading on social history and self
sufficiency of late. Particularly impressive has been a wonderful old
American book which covers kitchens and gardens and the sort of
equipment/plants/activities that the early colonists would have
used/followed. The most surprising thing to me is how much in common we
have in terms of the crops we eat and the plants we still all mention as
having in our own veg plots. As a result of some of my reading I have
started and experiment in vinegar making. Will be a few weeks (and some
more heat) yet to see if the "mother" is doing her job.
I'd be interested to know of other's experience if they have tried making
vinegar.
Fran
Janet Baraclough
> I had a good trawl through my books last night looking up the subject of
> growing hazels, the only one that seems to even mention a northerly limit to
> successful nut production is, ironically, a book advocating a vegan self
> reliant UK, Kathleen Jannaway's 'abundant Living in The coming Age Of The
> Tree', where she writes "In the UK we have hazel, beech and oak widespread
> and sweet chestnuts in the south, all capable of yielding large crops of
> nutritious seeds". she then goes on to say "I know a man who, 1000 feet up
> in the Welsh hills gets, by careful selection and good husbandry, good crops
> of hazel and walnuts".
> Flora Britanica by Richard Maybe says that cob nuts were a staple of
> prehistoric people, especially the Celts, and gives accounts of abundant
> hazel crops occuring in Ireland
I think you may have misread what I wrote about hazels; I agree
that they grow, (so obviously produce nuts sporadically), up to the
arctic circle. I grow hazel and three varieties of cob nut myself.Our
hill is named Caltuinn... the celtic name for hazel..after the
abounding wild hazel.Bronze age people lived here two thousand years
ago, and no doubt collected them in nut years.
Some years, no nuts are produced. The point was, in the north nuts
don't provide a reliable crop ANNUALLY.That is of no great importance
to people ancient or modern whose diet includes animal proteins, but
it might be to the subjects of this thread...vegans attempting
self-sufficiency.
Janet.(Scotland).