Perennial Agriculture Now! Our presentation at American Society for Agronomy. 5


staple yieldsFor the last several years, Eric Toensmeier and I have been working (ever so slowly) on a scientific review of global perennial staple crops. Last year we received an invitation to present our work at the annual American Society of Agronomy conference, in a session that was otherwise composed of perennial grains researchers. This was an exciting opportunity (as well as a deadline to light a fire under our slow progress). Eric and I decided that he would attend and present. He had never had a chance to present at a scientific conference – and more importantly, he has done the vast bulk of the work feeding into this project. He’s been painstakingly combing through scientific and technical literature over the past five years, and assembling a formidable database of 100s of perennial crops. My role in the project has been to help frame that tremendous work in terms of contemporary scientific frameworks, act as an interpreter and foil for Eric in crafting language for a scientific audience, and more recently, to generate visualizations of the data. It’s an ongoing honor and pleasure to work with him on this project.

Eric was unable to attend the conference due to health issues, but happily the organizers were happy to have him submit a screencast of his presentation. It’s about 17 minutes long, and represents the very beginning of much greater things. It serves as a teaser for what will be just one section of his forthcoming book (due out next year) – which I believe will radically reshape the global conversation about agriculture and climate change. Enjoy!

 

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em9sdBX0T_A]


5 thoughts on “Perennial Agriculture Now! Our presentation at American Society for Agronomy.

  • Elizabeth Kuester

    Thank you for your presentation and perspective. Good work.it reminded me of a book I found years ago and have been intrigued with since-“Tree crops. A Permanent Agriculture”by j.russell Smih.copyright was 1950 by the Devin-Adair company. I”m especially impressed by his data on honey locusts as a livestock feed crop,and for use with pastured livestock,but I have not found further or more current info on this.He provides data on a variety of potential tree crops so I thought you might be interested.Sort of a message in a bottle . Anyway, best wishes on you and your work.

  • Danielle

    Great to see permaculture working at this level! I am a permaculture teacher based in Sydney, Australia. My background is in medical research and critical appraisal of scientific literature. If I can help, please let me know.

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