Solarpunk Farming

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Breeding Crops for Polycultures (headwatersblog.substack.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Alley cropping with trees always seems like a win-win to me. You can't run a massive harvester though those fields, but you can certainly still mechanically harvest. You could do more than just one tree crop, too. The late emerging leaves of walnut remind me of the Kentucky coffeetree, which is super hardy, and I believe it fixes nitrogen, but it's an ice age relic so it's leaves come out late and drop early.

I'd be interested to learn more about harvesting 2 annuals intercropped. I'm assuming the alfalfa/perennial wheat example would just be mowed down for silage or something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

Alley cropping has a lot of advantages and scales well depending on one's goals. If you wanted to have large combines, you can simply make the alleys wider. Its all about tradeoffs. I'll have to look into Kentucky coffeetree, I imagine that their bean pods would make good livestock fodder.

Regarding the alfalfa wheat intercrop, the goal is actually to harvest the wheat for grain, with the alfalfa functioning as a sort of fertilizer crop (that's still harvested for forage after the wheat is harvested). There are a lot of barriers, so it's an active area of research, but it's a really interesting topic.