While growing crops under the canopy may not feed the world, it can help save forests from the axe.
On a small piece of land alongside the Connecticut River in Massachusetts, Jono Neiger has planted seven acres of trees. In around six years, these trees will start bearing chestnuts – a once staple crop used to make flour in the US, before most of the country’s chestnut trees were destroyed by a blight at the turn of the 20th Century. Neiger called the farm Big River Chestnuts.
But six years is a long time to wait for an income. To make the land more immediately profitable, Neiger recently added smaller trees and bushes beneath the canopy of the chestnut plantation – varieties of elderberries, pawpaws and persimmons – which will bear fruit within the next two years. He also released chickens onto the land to provide an even more immediate source of money. Read more
