1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,520 Welcome to the Going to Seed podcast. I'm Shane Simonson and today we are talking with 2 00:00:05,520 --> 00:00:12,080 restoration agriculture pioneer Mark Sheppard. So to get us started Mark, can you tell us a bit 3 00:00:12,080 --> 00:00:20,080 about your background and the path that led you into crop breeding? Oh my goodness, how many days 4 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:27,120 you have for this? We'll see, born and raised in the industrial wasteland suburbs outside of Boston, 5 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:34,720 in the early 1970s when all the factories basically closed down and moved overseas to 6 00:00:34,720 --> 00:00:38,880 third world countries where it was cheaper to run everything and you could pollute everything like 7 00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:46,080 crazy. And the river at the bottom of the hill, our house had a river that looped around it, 8 00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:50,720 a big huge loop and the road went straight across. Whether we went north or south, you had to cross 9 00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:56,000 this river and the big game was to guess what color is the river today. Blue, green, red, orange, 10 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:03,680 just crazy colors and it stunk. And I was in Boy Scouts, conservation was talked about quite 11 00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:09,360 a bit. It was the era of the Bambi movie and taking care of wildlife. So I got really into 12 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:15,680 nature and all things outdoors because I lived in such a horrible wasteland and it just seemed 13 00:01:15,680 --> 00:01:24,400 like a beautiful thing. And after they went through all kinds of legal actions and protests and 14 00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:29,840 sabotage and stuff like that, the companies that were dumping all the chemicals into the river as 15 00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:36,000 their waste disposal system, they finally agreed to put in a wastewater treatment. And lo and behold, 16 00:01:36,000 --> 00:01:40,000 the river cleaned up. I got to see the river clean up pretty soon. Like after a few years, 17 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:46,560 we could see the bottom washed away, stuff started to grow back on the outside edges of it. 18 00:01:46,560 --> 00:01:52,320 So I got to see firsthand, one, just by leaving it alone. And then two, if we actually do something 19 00:01:52,320 --> 00:02:00,240 to assist with the process of restoration, it can happen even faster. And I got the bug 20 00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:07,040 and always wanted to be a bum living out in the woods. I couldn't afford to buy any woods. So I 21 00:02:07,040 --> 00:02:11,200 bought a clear cut. That was the first property that I bought after saving up for a few years 22 00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:19,120 and started replanting it, built a cabin and got it reappraised. It was appraised for like 23 00:02:19,120 --> 00:02:25,680 $25,000 more than I bought it for. And I said, hmm, this is pretty cool because I can borrow up 24 00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:30,480 to the level of the appraisal and buy another clear cut and do it again. I can start doing 25 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:36,560 earth repair work as a real estate business. And so that's what I've been doing for the past 26 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:42,000 30 some odd years. I got properties from Alaska to Maine and everywhere in between. And every single 27 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:47,760 one of them, the goal is to buy a degraded farm property or degraded natural resource. 28 00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:55,840 Property replant the whole darn thing, but replant it with mostly food plant communities 29 00:02:56,480 --> 00:03:00,560 so that they can now be harvested by human beings. And if the human beings aren't there 30 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:06,880 to harvest it, it's a wild system and all the animals and wildlife can feast on it. So we're 31 00:03:06,880 --> 00:03:13,200 doing ecological restoration by planting economic and agricultural plant communities. 32 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:20,560 And that said nothing about me, I guess. I don't know. And in particular, your interest in plant 33 00:03:20,560 --> 00:03:26,560 breeding and your take on it, I think is something that would be a really great place to start 34 00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:30,960 introducing you to the audience. So can you say a bit more about that? Yeah, what's interesting, 35 00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:36,480 I'd mentioned the hill that I lived on. On the south side of the hill was the birthplace of 36 00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:42,320 Luther Burbank, plant breeder Luther Burbank. On the north side of the hill was the birthplace of 37 00:03:42,320 --> 00:03:48,240 Johnny Appleseed. I kid you not, this place acted like this. So Johnny Appleseed would grab all 38 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:53,600 these Appleseeds and he went out and he planted them all over the place, mostly as a tree nursery. 39 00:03:54,320 --> 00:03:59,920 Then he would sell them to other pioneer settlers coming in because if you planted a orchard 40 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:07,520 that showed that you had intent to settle there, and so they would be able to get their homestead 41 00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:13,120 claims better because they planted fruit trees and he had a little bit of income. But what that was 42 00:04:13,120 --> 00:04:20,480 is this mass selection of random apple genetics that had never happened before. He is the human 43 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:25,440 being that is responsible for more diversity within the apple gene pool of any other person 44 00:04:25,440 --> 00:04:30,960 in North America, probably any other person in history. And then Luther Burbank, he was a 45 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:36,800 mass selection breeder extraordinaire. He is the individual that has more plant varieties credited 46 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:41,360 to his name and his breeding work than any other human being on the face of the planet from 47 00:04:41,840 --> 00:04:48,880 thornless cacti to multi-petaled shasta daisies. Most of the plum industry is based on plums that 48 00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:54,800 came from him. The entire fruit industry in Canada is all from, you know, spun off from Luther 49 00:04:54,800 --> 00:05:00,960 Burbank's work. And for those who aren't familiar with mass selection, I'm suspecting that your 50 00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:08,400 crowd is a little bit more than others. You plant a zillion seeds and you pick the ones that meet 51 00:05:08,400 --> 00:05:13,840 your criteria and it's that easy. So how I got into it, I had those early influences, Johnny 52 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:19,280 Appleseed and Luther Burbank. And then when I'm on a property and I planted a bunch of things, 53 00:05:19,280 --> 00:05:25,440 I had read all of the books, how you're supposed to dig a $40 hole for a $10 tree. Well, I didn't 54 00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:29,920 have time for that. And then you're supposed to do cover crops for these many years and this much 55 00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:35,440 compost and then this and balance that and get rid of this pest and that. I didn't have time for 56 00:05:35,440 --> 00:05:40,480 that. Didn't, you know, have the interest in doing that. So a lot of stuff died. And what I noticed 57 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:45,200 is that the stuff that lived was the stuff that really should have lived because it had something 58 00:05:45,200 --> 00:05:50,640 going for it. And then I just started to select the seed of the ones that actually did quite well. 59 00:05:51,200 --> 00:05:56,400 And after I started to realize this, then it's like, oh, let's get systematic about it. 60 00:05:56,960 --> 00:06:01,120 If I'm going to be breeding trees and I do most of my work with trees and shrubs, 61 00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:07,600 I want something that's hyper precocious that I put the seed in the ground and that SOB turns around 62 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:13,200 and it flowers next year. In the wild, that's not necessarily a good trait because you're putting 63 00:06:13,200 --> 00:06:17,680 all your energy into reproduction and you get overshaded by somebody else and you just fade away 64 00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:22,160 and you disappear. But for me, that's what I want because I want to be able to turn around those 65 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:31,040 generations as fast as possible. On my hazelnut breeding, that population of on average about 80% 66 00:06:31,840 --> 00:06:37,440 of the little hazelnut plants that you put in the ground, their second year, they're flowering and 67 00:06:37,440 --> 00:06:43,520 producing nuts. Now that's not enough for it to be like commercially viable yields, but what that 68 00:06:43,520 --> 00:06:48,960 allows me to do is to keep turning those generations faster and faster and faster. 69 00:06:50,160 --> 00:06:55,760 Essential for finding these other traits. I don't think we have to invent traits. We don't have to 70 00:06:55,760 --> 00:07:00,720 insert new genes from here or there. All the secrets for these plants to have survived on 71 00:07:00,720 --> 00:07:04,240 this planet for millions of years that they've survived here on this planet, all the traits are 72 00:07:04,240 --> 00:07:08,880 in there somewhere. We just have to roll the dice enough until they show up and then go find them 73 00:07:08,880 --> 00:07:13,040 and be paying attention for that. Hyperpreocosity is the first thing I'm looking for. 74 00:07:13,840 --> 00:07:18,720 In this part of Wisconsin, sometimes the temperature gets to negative 40. So it obviously 75 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:26,000 has to be cold hardy. It has to be able to tolerate weirdnesses in the spring because in the spring 76 00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:32,800 time, it can get really warm late winter and then get right back down to zero Fahrenheit or even 77 00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:39,920 colder. And a lot of fruit around here, especially stone fruit, the buds will start to swell and 78 00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:46,880 they're all dead in the buds. The wild plum populations out here, I think only three or four 79 00:07:46,880 --> 00:07:52,800 years in the 25 years that I've been here, have we ever had a crop of plums because of that 80 00:07:52,800 --> 00:07:58,400 characteristic. I think maybe for the wild plums, that's an advantage because nobody's used to 81 00:07:58,400 --> 00:08:03,040 eating plums until all the wildlife. All of a sudden this year, there's like a zillion 82 00:08:03,040 --> 00:08:07,040 plums everywhere and the plums can propagate and the raccoons eat them and poop them out all over 83 00:08:07,040 --> 00:08:13,760 the place. So hyperpreocosity, cold hardiness, then pest and disease resistant because I don't 84 00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:20,080 want to spray any sprays. And if you get some kind of crazy, ridiculous, ugly disease and die, 85 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:25,600 good riddance. And if these pests riddle you, I don't want to eat all this wormy fruit or 86 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:32,400 whatever else it is. So those are my primary selection criteria and been at it here on this 87 00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:43,360 site now for, like I said, 25 plus years. And the results actually show. It's not a wildly 88 00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:48,080 get rich quick kind of scheme, but we're a profitable venture. We're paying the bills. 89 00:08:48,640 --> 00:08:54,960 And that's okay. Okay is okay in my book. A related note, did you ever see that 90 00:08:54,960 --> 00:09:00,320 Luther Burbank developed chestnuts that flowered, I think six months from seed? 91 00:09:00,320 --> 00:09:06,560 They were functionally annual. I have two family lines that do exactly that. You put the seed in 92 00:09:06,560 --> 00:09:11,440 the ground and it comes up and it flowers. And actually I have some of Luther Burbank's 93 00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:16,320 genetics in my chestnuts population here. They're not the ones that reproduce real early. 94 00:09:17,120 --> 00:09:20,720 They're the ones actually that have a hard time surviving because of cold hardiness. 95 00:09:20,720 --> 00:09:25,120 Most of those have died because of cold hardiness. He was in California after all, you know. 96 00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:30,480 Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. So moving on, can you tell us a bit about 97 00:09:30,480 --> 00:09:35,600 your local growing conditions in terms of like how much space you have, the soil, 98 00:09:35,600 --> 00:09:39,520 you briefly mentioned the temperatures, how you manage water, fertility weeds and pests. 99 00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:45,760 Just give us a broad brush of the environment that you're working with and the resources. 100 00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:51,040 Well, first of all, average annual rainfall is approximately one meter of rain. 101 00:09:51,920 --> 00:10:01,040 And most often it happens in severe thunderstorms. The record rainfall here in one afternoon was 13 102 00:10:01,040 --> 00:10:06,960 inches. So, you know, almost half a meter of rain in an afternoon. Right down the road, 103 00:10:06,960 --> 00:10:14,240 I was almost washed away in a 20 inch thunderstorm. So there's real extreme rainfall events. It's 104 00:10:14,240 --> 00:10:22,640 rolling hills and heavy clay soil. So when it rains like that, the water just runs away, 105 00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:30,160 highly erosive. This region in Southwest Wisconsin is where the soil conservation service got started 106 00:10:30,160 --> 00:10:36,720 in the USA. The Coon Creek watershed project was the first watershed scale project to prevent 107 00:10:36,720 --> 00:10:42,400 erosion in the USA on agricultural farmland. So tremendous amount of erosion because all runoff. 108 00:10:42,400 --> 00:10:49,760 So first order of business is to set up a series of swales and berms and ponds or call them terraces 109 00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:54,400 and, you know, water and sediment control basins if you want. I don't care what you call them, 110 00:10:54,400 --> 00:11:02,000 but a way to channel the water across the slope, soak it in, spread it out and store it in pools 111 00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:07,360 across the property in order to be used later either for, you know, a watering livestock or 112 00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:12,720 irrigating crops if necessary. So water management was first order of business. 113 00:11:14,720 --> 00:11:20,640 Just quickly, do you do much crop irrigation or do you mostly expect your crops to rely on 114 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:27,280 like stored soil moisture? The crops are predominantly, you know, rain-fed and soil moisture 115 00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:34,400 fed. Two different, three now, three different seasons I've irrigated new tree seedlings when 116 00:11:34,400 --> 00:11:41,440 they're put in the ground because it hadn't rained. On this property here from February 117 00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:47,280 until third week of September of this year, we had 0.7 inches of rain. That's just a little 118 00:11:47,280 --> 00:11:51,760 over a centimeter of rain. Everything was just cooked. It's a federal disaster drought area, 119 00:11:51,760 --> 00:11:57,680 blah, blah, blah. And yet I had green grass all the way through and I never had to feed the cattle 120 00:11:57,680 --> 00:12:04,160 any hay until they went off the freezer camp. So a little bit about the summers is they can be 121 00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:10,240 gray drizzly and it never stops raining. I think it was like four or five years ago we had like 72 122 00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:16,480 inches of rain in the year. So twice the normal rainfall that was for two years in a row. So in 123 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:21,920 most farms once the soil is saturated that water just runs away and it's gone and so they didn't 124 00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:26,720 gain anything from that. Well here, you know, we stored up so much that a whole bunch of springs 125 00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:31,520 woke up that were never around before and I'm pretty sure that it's all that banked moisture 126 00:12:31,520 --> 00:12:37,280 in the soil that has helped us to get through this year. That and then of course the deep rooted trees 127 00:12:37,280 --> 00:12:42,640 from chestnuts and hazelnuts and so on. Temperatures in the summertime for your 128 00:12:42,640 --> 00:12:50,400 celsius people, somebody please do the conversion. Our record high here was 116 degrees. This summer 129 00:12:50,400 --> 00:12:57,440 we were 110 degrees, that's Fahrenheit, screaming hot. That's 46 degrees celsius. I think that's 130 00:12:57,440 --> 00:13:02,160 hotter than we've had here in Australia in the subtropics. It's pretty terrible, it was really 131 00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:09,040 terrible. You know and then because we're so far north we get like 20 hours of day in the summertime 132 00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:15,680 and so you're like you know 95 degrees Fahrenheit at like 8, 10 o'clock at night, just brutal heat. 133 00:13:16,400 --> 00:13:22,960 Summer wasn't so hot, it was only 110. That was kind of almost pleasant. So 40 and 40 below is the 134 00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:27,680 same as 40 below. Fahrenheit and celsius are the same there so you guys know how cold that is. 135 00:13:27,680 --> 00:13:35,440 So it's quite an extreme range of temperatures so that's kind of like what the plants have to deal 136 00:13:35,440 --> 00:13:41,920 with. I'm thoroughly impressed with the work that you do mass selecting to be productive under those 137 00:13:41,920 --> 00:13:49,440 conditions. It's quite amazing. Well and I would like to defer from me. You think about it, this is 138 00:13:49,440 --> 00:13:54,560 how this planet was designed, adapted, evolved, created. Who knows how the heck this planet got 139 00:13:54,560 --> 00:14:02,640 here. This is how it operates. That's the nature operating system and it has been doing just fine, 140 00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:07,040 thank you very much, for you know hundreds of thousands to millions to zillions of years. 141 00:14:07,680 --> 00:14:14,400 Whatever reference material you're reading, it has always operated quite well and the mass selection 142 00:14:14,400 --> 00:14:21,120 process is how nature does it. The tree puts out a zillion seeds, the ones that actually can survive, 143 00:14:21,680 --> 00:14:26,880 thrive, and then reproduce, those are the ones that pass their genes on to the next generation. 144 00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:34,320 Now suddenly that plant is adapted to that region and its offspring have the traits that allowed it 145 00:14:34,320 --> 00:14:38,880 to thrive in that region. So that's not my work, I'm just imitating nature, that's all. 146 00:14:38,880 --> 00:14:45,200 And probably accelerating things as well by bringing genetics together that otherwise would 147 00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:52,000 take thousands of years to cross paths. And that is the human difference there is that we can now 148 00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:58,800 be active participants in this ecological system. We can observe for traits and we can concentrate 149 00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:03,680 the traits that we find favorable to us for the food, the pest and disease resistance, 150 00:15:03,680 --> 00:15:10,720 productivity, and yes we can now transport you know seeds and cuttings from afar and have 151 00:15:10,720 --> 00:15:17,520 new combinations that never existed before. How do you deal with weeds? Like when you're 152 00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:24,160 establishing new trees do you do much in terms of weed control? What I'll do is I'll mow, 153 00:15:24,160 --> 00:15:31,280 usually we'll plant the trees into old pasture that's been scalp mowed and then you just knife 154 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:40,000 the trees in and turn them loose, that's it. Maintenance is at best is getting mowed on either 155 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:47,040 side once or twice a year. There's just, I didn't tell you how many acres, it's 110 acres so 45, 156 00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:51,760 50 hectares somewhere in that ballpark. That's on this property and there's other properties that I 157 00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:57,680 have my fingers in. And if you think about it, if you think about an orchard in the classic sense 158 00:15:57,680 --> 00:16:02,000 of the word, there's a lot of work, a lot of equipment that's necessary for that. Whereas 159 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:07,040 if you think of a natural system, we don't need any equipment, we don't need any special skills, 160 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:15,120 we can just let it be and let it grow. And so the labor to keep this system productive is 161 00:16:15,840 --> 00:16:20,560 hardly anything compared to the labor in an orchard and the inputs are practically zero, 162 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:27,760 really practically zero. We use animals, cattle and hogs for grazing, so for any kind of weeds 163 00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:32,800 and grass controls, that goes back to the weed control question. They're also obviously nutrient 164 00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:38,640 cycling, accumulating nitrogen fertilizer in the right place at the right time. Some of the things 165 00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:45,840 that cattle do, and I'll use apples as an example, in the fall of the year when the grass doesn't 166 00:16:45,840 --> 00:16:51,120 grow as fast, it's still warm enough that we've got green grass, but it's not really growing fast. 167 00:16:51,680 --> 00:16:59,040 And the apples and other fruits start to drop their leaves. Well, any leaves that had apple scab 168 00:16:59,040 --> 00:17:05,040 lesions on them fall to the ground. Cows are hungry, they eat it all up. They're cleaning up 169 00:17:05,040 --> 00:17:10,160 the orchard floor for me, they get rid of any kind of apple scab that are there. They also eat any 170 00:17:10,160 --> 00:17:16,560 apples that are on the ground. How we harvest is we don't harvest apples and then bring them to a 171 00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:21,280 packing shed where you grade them and sort them and then have to deal with the ones that you grade 172 00:17:21,280 --> 00:17:26,960 out. We just grade in the field, only the good apples come in for us to use for whatever purposes 173 00:17:26,960 --> 00:17:32,640 we're using them for, and then we let the rest fall to the ground where the pigs and the cattle 174 00:17:32,640 --> 00:17:37,520 can eat them. So you can't let the apples fall to the ground because then all those pests will 175 00:17:37,520 --> 00:17:42,560 come out pupate and live in the soil and come out and have worse pests next year. It's like, well, 176 00:17:42,560 --> 00:17:48,240 no, they don't last more than a day or two. We go through a block, we pick a block, the ones that 177 00:17:48,240 --> 00:17:53,120 have bugs, we throw them on the ground. And afterward done harvesting that block, the animals 178 00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:58,800 go in, boom, there's not an apple on the ground. So they're short-circuiting the disease cycle 179 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:05,760 by eating diseased branches and leaves. And they're short-circuiting the pest cycle by eating all these 180 00:18:05,760 --> 00:18:11,600 fruit that have larvae inside of it. One thing that you were really useful in inspiring me is 181 00:18:11,600 --> 00:18:17,920 the advantage of growing your own tree seedlings and planting them out as small as possible. 182 00:18:18,640 --> 00:18:23,120 Could you tell me a bit more about that particular strategy and technique compared to the usual way 183 00:18:23,120 --> 00:18:29,360 that people think you buy this, you know, meter high tree to dig a huge hole and plant? Well, 184 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:38,480 by putting the smaller trees in the ground, and typically the trees that we plant, they're one 185 00:18:38,480 --> 00:18:46,800 year in a nursery bed, one summer, one growing season in a nursery bed. And probably their 12 186 00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:52,320 to 18 inches is the average height of these trees. Some of the trees, chestnuts especially, some of 187 00:18:52,320 --> 00:18:58,720 them will get up to like, you know, a meter high, but you know, that's the exception. And so they're 188 00:18:58,720 --> 00:19:04,160 less expensive to purchase if you're going to be purchasing them, if they're small. And we just 189 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:09,280 knife them into the ground and we don't amend the soil at all unless there's a massive mineral 190 00:19:09,280 --> 00:19:16,160 imbalance. There are some places that, you know, certain elements are way out of whack and we, you 191 00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:22,720 know, we have amended with minerals on occasion. Our big issue here is the calcium magnesium ratio 192 00:19:22,720 --> 00:19:31,200 is such that the extra magnesium prevents the uptake of a lot of nutrients and it causes the 193 00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:36,640 soil to really stick and it's a real hard sticky soil. I've got exactly the same issue here. 194 00:19:37,520 --> 00:19:44,000 And so what we have done on occasions is amend with Idaho rock phosphate, which is calcium 195 00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:50,320 phosphorus, not very soluble and it persists for a long time. It has to be basically broken down by 196 00:19:50,320 --> 00:19:55,440 going through the gut of some kind of soil organism. So other than that, we don't do anything. 197 00:19:56,160 --> 00:20:03,280 And we plant high density in the rows on when we're doing a planting of what we'll call canopy 198 00:20:03,280 --> 00:20:10,480 trees, which are anything that's going to be like head high or taller. We'll put those at two meter 199 00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:17,440 spacing. Anything that is a shrub species, we'll put in at one meter spacing. But here on the home 200 00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:23,520 farm, because we generate so many seedlings, oftentimes I'll put them in at like 18 inch, 201 00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:30,880 so half a meter between trees. Because end of the nursery season, we're selling all kinds of trees. 202 00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:34,480 I've got all these leftovers. I'm going to put them in at my place. I put them in real close. 203 00:20:35,040 --> 00:20:39,520 There's a couple of blocks here I've done that were 18 inch spaces between trees, 204 00:20:40,160 --> 00:20:46,080 a double row, one meter wide. So that was a stem density of about 4,000 stems an acre. 205 00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:52,240 So if you plant chestnuts, according to the way that the universities in the USA say that you 206 00:20:52,240 --> 00:21:00,560 should plant chestnuts, you have almost 65 or 70 plants per acre. Now out of those 65 or 70 plants, 207 00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:06,000 let's say you lose 20% of them. Now you're down to 40 plants per acre. What kind of production 208 00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:11,040 you're going to get out of 40 plants per acre? And they start to produce pretty young. Really, 209 00:21:11,040 --> 00:21:18,000 you'll start to get some nuts at year three. By year five or seven, you got reasonable yields 210 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:23,840 from this, but you've had this huge space, 10 meters of space in between trees that could have 211 00:21:23,840 --> 00:21:30,960 been producing a handful of nuts each. And instead of buying grafted cultivars, it may cost you 30, 212 00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:37,200 40 US dollars. Now you can buy seedlings. Oh, you don't have seedlings. The variability is crazy. 213 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:42,400 Well, that's exactly why we want them. We want to have these wildly variable seedlings that will 214 00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:46,560 cross with one another. And then now all of a sudden, once the trees start to compete with 215 00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:50,800 one another, their branches are running into each other. I now say, well, I like this one. 216 00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:57,120 It has all the characteristics that I want, but the one right next to it doesn't really. So I now 217 00:21:57,120 --> 00:22:04,720 cut it down, inoculate it with shiitake mushrooms. I got a yield by thinning out my trees instead of 218 00:22:04,720 --> 00:22:10,720 an expense of taking care of these trees and not producing as much. There was one block of chestnut 219 00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:17,520 trees. It was one of the first times I ever got flamed by a PhD up on stage. I claimed that I was 220 00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:25,440 making $4,000 per acre growing chestnuts my very first season. And that person just ripped me all 221 00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:32,080 kinds of new orifices. I never said that I made $4,000 worth of chestnuts. I said I made $4,000 222 00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:40,000 per acre growing chestnuts. And I was making the $4,000 an acre with produce, mushrooms, pigs, 223 00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:46,400 cattle, and chestnuts. And I did actually get quite a few chestnuts because that was the block 224 00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:52,720 where I put them in 18 inches apart, one meter between double rows. I had 4,000 stems per acre. 225 00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:58,560 I probably got 30, 40 pounds of chestnuts, maybe 50 pounds of chestnuts on an acre in year one. 226 00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:05,360 I never would have found chestnuts that were that precocious if I had planted 60 chestnuts per acre 227 00:23:05,360 --> 00:23:11,840 and waited for them. Because what if I picked the 60 wrong chestnut? Are you familiar with the dice 228 00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:19,600 game Yahtzee? Yes. Yes. You have five dice. And if you roll five of a kind, you get a Yahtzee. Now, 229 00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:25,680 planting 50 chestnuts per acre, 60 chestnuts per acre, is like playing Yahtzee with three dice. 230 00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:32,000 Here's three dice. Go ahead, roll those three dice. Can you ever get five of a kind with three dice? 231 00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:37,840 Nope. You're set up to lose. Well, then maybe you can improve your yield by adding this to your soil 232 00:23:37,840 --> 00:23:41,680 or spraying that or buying this new piece of equipment that will do this and that. That's the 233 00:23:41,680 --> 00:23:48,080 game that we're being told wholesale is the way that we're supposed to do things. And that's 234 00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:54,000 purely a concept that is not in synchrony with nature and how this planet works. 235 00:23:54,000 --> 00:24:01,920 This planet works by putting out a zillion seeds and then letting natural processes and humans are 236 00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:08,960 a part of nature. We're going to select for the ones that meet our criteria. Do you have any tree 237 00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:16,400 species that you figured out how to do direct sowing? Oh, oh yeah. It's especially easy with 238 00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:21,120 real hard shelled ones. We have a black walnut here in the US. It's almost impossible to crack. 239 00:24:21,120 --> 00:24:28,400 So black walnut, butternut. Actually a friend and I, he worked for the USDA at the time and we 240 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:37,120 designed a single row tree seed drill. And that all you do is you change the size of the opening 241 00:24:37,120 --> 00:24:42,400 on this. It's a big drum. You put a hopper on top, fill it full of seeds and then the drum will pick 242 00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:48,480 up the seeds and drop it in a slot behind a knife. We did that, geez, like 20 years ago or so. And 243 00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:55,040 I've got probably a third of this property is all direct seeded. Yeah. It's something that I can see 244 00:24:55,040 --> 00:25:00,720 a huge amount of potential for. Like it's the ultimate extreme of reducing the investment per 245 00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:07,360 tree and to maximize the amount of selection that happens in the process. Yeah. The only issue with 246 00:25:07,360 --> 00:25:12,320 that, because what happened is after we came up with that machine, because he worked for the USDA, 247 00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:20,160 we tried to get direct seeding acceptable as a technique to be used in the conservation reserve 248 00:25:20,160 --> 00:25:25,040 program here in the States where they encourage farmers to plant trees. So we did all kinds of 249 00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:30,240 different research blocks, various different locations. Some people were broadcasting with a 250 00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:35,600 Whirly Gig broadcast seeder and that worked fine too. What was found out though to be critical 251 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:43,920 with direct seeding is that if you did not have stellar weed control, your rodent populations 252 00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:50,320 would explode and you'd up lots of your seeds and seedlings. And so for the conservation reserve 253 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:57,520 program, it eventually got approved as a practice, but you had to agree to use herbicide to keep the 254 00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:04,800 weeds down because you didn't get enough trees. And I was the control plot in that. And so I 255 00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:10,320 was the control plot in that where we used no herbicides. We had one, two, three, four different 256 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:16,240 direct seed plots on this property and used no herbicide. It's the first time I ever saw deer 257 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:21,920 rooting in the ground as if they were pigs. They just went right down the row. They found that slot 258 00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:28,160 and they just ate them all up. And after the three years of the research project was over, 259 00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:33,120 we had to go out and they put some random 10 by 10 meter grid and you got to get on your hands, 260 00:26:33,120 --> 00:26:38,320 count all the seedlings that you see, and it had to come up to the equivalent of 600 stems per acre 261 00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:44,480 or it's not allowable. And on those particular plots here, aside from the walnut, black walnut 262 00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:50,480 plot was just fine. We couldn't find 600 stems per acre. So I hung my head. I was totally depressed. 263 00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:55,680 It's like, I wanted us to have some sort of non-chemical organic alternative to direct 264 00:26:55,680 --> 00:27:00,960 seeding side. This isn't going to work. So I planted a whole bunch of my Korean pines on 265 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:08,480 one of my direct seeded sites. And lo and behold, to this day, there's probably 1,200, 1,300 of the 266 00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:13,680 species that we were looking for, but the mice and the deer were clipping them off at ground level 267 00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:19,760 and you just never saw them. And once it started to get established a little bit longer, they built 268 00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:28,000 up more root reserves. They jumped. There's probably three times as many stems per acre 269 00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:33,600 as required for a CR, but we just didn't have the 100% take that they wanted. 270 00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:40,400 It's one of my favorite places on the farm because it's so randomized, species to species, 271 00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:45,120 you just kind of wander through here going from various different nut tree to 272 00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:48,960 nut tree and never find something that crazy diverse in nature. 273 00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:56,240 One point I would make up that direct sowing tree seeds in particular, I think the 274 00:27:56,240 --> 00:28:01,600 success rate that you get year to year is going to be really, really variable due to changing climate 275 00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:06,880 and pest pressure. It's almost like how nesting is supposed to work that you can only get away 276 00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:12,800 with doing it once in a blue moon. That's right. That makes total sense. 277 00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:19,840 Makes total sense. Now, can you tell me a bit more about your main crop breeding projects, 278 00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:24,960 like the species that you work with, the goals, how you sourced your original material, 279 00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:31,360 cultivation, pollination, selection strategies? I'll throw it completely open to you. 280 00:28:31,360 --> 00:28:36,400 Well, the primary species that I work with, the heavy hitters are chestnuts and hazelnuts. 281 00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:45,520 That was my focus from early on on purpose because I was looking for a perennial substitute 282 00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:50,560 for corn and beans. The chestnut being the high carbohydrate and the hazelnut being the high 283 00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:58,400 protein with extra oil. Other species I'm working with, we have actually USDA growing zone eight 284 00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:06,160 Persian walnuts that are actually growing on this farm here. USDA growing zone four most of the time, 285 00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:11,360 but every 10 or 15 years we get a test winter down to minus 40. That's USDA growing zone three. 286 00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:19,840 These trees have been surviving minus 40 for decades now. Once again, what I was selecting 287 00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:27,840 for was hyperpreococity, cold hardiness, pest and disease resistance. Well, with hazelnuts, 288 00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:33,680 because they've responded so quickly, chestnuts not quite as quickly as hazelnuts. With the hazelnuts, 289 00:29:33,680 --> 00:29:43,600 we're doing diameter selection now. If you look at a hazelnut shrub, it's a shrub, it's not a tree. 290 00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:50,160 European hazel is a large shrub that Europeans and Americans in Oregon, they train to be a tree 291 00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:56,320 and it's not really a tree. They're adding extra work. We let it grow as a shrub. If you look at 292 00:29:56,320 --> 00:30:03,440 a hazelnut shrub and you see no hazelnut clusters on it, that's a zero on our one to five scale. 293 00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:08,880 If you look at a hazelnut and there's a hazelnut at every single cluster, at every single node 294 00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:13,600 and the plant is almost laying on the ground, that's a five. We grade all of the different 295 00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:18,960 plants by yield productivity on a scale of one to five. They get marked, go through second year, 296 00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:24,560 do the one to five again. Then we go through the third year, marking a one to five. Then what 297 00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:30,160 happens is you look at the flags. If you had a flag as you were a heavy bearer, a four or a five 298 00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:35,600 this year, well, next year, if we go there and there's no nuts on you, we pull that flag 299 00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:39,120 because that means you've got this alternate bearing characteristic going on and we don't 300 00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:45,840 want that. Then if you actually get three flags in a row, you're a four or a five heavy yielder 301 00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:54,240 and at least show a glimmer of annual bearing every single year. Then what happens, the fourth 302 00:30:54,240 --> 00:31:00,800 year is we go through and we do a diameter, a caliper on all the different nuts and we keep 303 00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:08,320 selecting through the years for a larger and larger average diameter per nut that are on those bushes. 304 00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:16,240 The hazels are the ones that we've done the most breeding work on because they've responded so 305 00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:24,400 quickly, they really have. In the past 15 years of doing this with the hazelnuts, we've increased 306 00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:33,680 the kernel diameter by four millimeters. If you realize that kernel is a sphere, you increase by 307 00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:39,280 four millimeters, it's a cubic relationship to the volume. The volume has dramatically increased 308 00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:46,240 per kernel on that plant. Those are the most intense ones that I work with. Asian pears are 309 00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:52,160 my favorite. It's probably had the lowest, I don't know what you call it, the lowest amount of good 310 00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:56,880 plants that come out of the seedlings. First of all, Asian pears won't grow in this part of the 311 00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:02,000 US because it's too cold. I immediately went to the grocery store and I got Asian pears that were 312 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:08,800 grown in California, cut them open, save the seed, let them grow a year and grafted those little twigs 313 00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:16,720 on top of already existing European pear rootstock and then you turn them loose. I think out of 314 00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:26,640 probably at least a couple thousand seedling Asian pears, there's two that are edible. One of them is 315 00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:32,720 fantastic. It's an amazing, just an amazing Asian pear. It's a little bit smaller than what you 316 00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:37,760 would see at a supermarket and you touch it to your teeth and it seems hard as a rock, 317 00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,200 but you bite through that skin because we have incisors. It's the most juiciest, sweetest Asian 318 00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:49,760 pear you ever did taste. It's unbelievable and it survives minus 40. It's an amazing plant. 319 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:55,520 I'm curious, how did you source your original material that you got started with for your 320 00:32:55,520 --> 00:33:01,280 chestnuts and your hazelnuts? How I sourced the original material, that was way back before the 321 00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:08,000 days of internet. What you do is you get a nursery catalog from one place and then you 322 00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:14,720 talk to the person there and find out who else has whatever, wherever else it is. I would get 323 00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:22,320 seedlings from the conservation grade seedlings and some of their varieties from everywhere I 324 00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:29,280 possibly could from Southwest USA, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota down through 325 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:36,160 Missouri and then I was Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Massachusetts. A couple from Canada. 326 00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:41,520 I got as wide a range of genetics that I could back in the day. Now with the internet, I can 327 00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:47,840 get stuff almost anywhere. I just have it shipped in and I almost have a little bit of a perverse 328 00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:53,120 sense of pride. You read these descriptions, oh, super cold hearted this is like, and you're in 329 00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:58,880 Missouri and you're telling me something is cold hearted, excuse me. I have a certain sense of 330 00:33:58,880 --> 00:34:04,400 pride in buying nursery stock from people and killing it. Have you noticed the effect that 331 00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:10,400 once you get genetics through the first generation that it often seems to go through 332 00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:15,920 some kind of reprogramming to make it more adapted to the local conditions? 333 00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:22,880 You're touching on something that resonates, but I don't exactly know what you mean. What do you 334 00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:29,040 mean? Because it used to be somewhat difficult to get stuff to survive and thrive and do well, 335 00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:37,120 but now it's like stuff just grows. Almost like I can't kill it. Is that part of what you mean? 336 00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:44,080 Yeah. When you buy a grafted tree from somewhere else, getting it to maturity and then producing 337 00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:49,520 seeds is often very hit and miss, can be a bit of a struggle. But once you have that first generation 338 00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:54,560 of seeds and you germinate them locally, even if there haven't been dramatic genetic changes, 339 00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:59,920 there seems to be something that happens in that early germination process that allows the plant 340 00:34:59,920 --> 00:35:06,800 to go through some kind of reprogramming. Now, I think how you're phrasing it is what 341 00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:12,640 interferes with the scientist in me and that's okay. But I have noticed a similar phenomenon 342 00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:22,080 and that the original material that I get just doesn't seem to mature and get ready to produce 343 00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:30,880 as quickly as seedling stock from stuff that's been bred on site. Why that is, let's just leave 344 00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:38,320 that out. Let's just say I have experienced that as well. And so why that is, I don't know. One of 345 00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:46,480 the reasons why I think that's possible here is that my plants are, you can't call them anything 346 00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:51,200 other than hybridized because you've got this kind of hazelnut and that kind of hazelnut, 347 00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:57,440 five, six, I've got European chestnuts, Chinese chestnuts, American chestnuts, 348 00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:03,840 hybrids from 50 different nurseries all over the place plus my own stuff. They are mutts of mutts. 349 00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:07,600 Yeah. And I think that probably also has something to do with it. 350 00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:15,840 See, I was going to say what? I'm not sure and I don't care. I want performance. As long as they're 351 00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:21,280 performing, that's great. One of the favorite questions for me to field on farm tours, there'll 352 00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:26,000 be this tree that's dead or just falling apart. It's horrible. Even the people are like, oh my, 353 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:33,440 what's wrong with that tree? I say, who cares? Who cares? I'm very much leaning towards being a, 354 00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:39,600 what's the word, like a biological agnostic. It's like there are so many things going on inside an 355 00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:43,280 organism and it's really fascinating when a scientist announces some new discovery. 356 00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:50,080 But so what? It works. It has worked for billions of years. Let's just find ways of making it work 357 00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:57,680 for us. Yeah. Just recently, this is not related to plant breeding, but I do a lot of work in Africa 358 00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:05,200 and we found this research that if you have three termite mounds per hectare of ag field, 359 00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:11,600 your crop yield increases by 30%. So the conclusion of this scientific research is, 360 00:37:11,600 --> 00:37:16,800 therefore we need to find out what is it that these termites are doing so we can come up with 361 00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:22,480 a spray that we can now add to our fields to get 30% and what moron thought of that? 362 00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:28,720 How about have termite mounds in your ag fields and deal with it? Have we missed talking about 363 00:37:28,720 --> 00:37:33,440 anything that you would like to cover? Because you focus, I think, probably more talking about 364 00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:38,880 the production and the design side of things, but we're really interested in the breeding side of 365 00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:46,480 the equation. I want to go back to your biological, botanical, agnostic thing. There is so much that 366 00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:53,040 we can know. So much that we can know. And of all the different research and things that I read, 367 00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:58,320 I can't give you a percent because somebody will get on my case about it, but so much of it is 368 00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:04,320 absolutely unnecessary. It doesn't really matter one bit. What matters to you and what matters to 369 00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:10,800 me is that these plants are thriving. They're growing. They're reproducing. They're healthy. 370 00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:15,680 They're nutritious. One of the things that has been discovered is that the trees that send off 371 00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:21,840 pest attacks more often have more phytonutrients in it that help us to prevent cancer and other 372 00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:26,560 various different diseases. They're better for our immune system. That's all that I care about is 373 00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:32,800 that these things are doing okay. And that factor is probably something that a human being, without 374 00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:37,760 any training, can tell by taste. If you gave them the choice of the better and the worst product, 375 00:38:38,720 --> 00:38:44,000 most human beings would be able to, or at least you could train people quite easily to recognize 376 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:50,320 it. Actually, a lot of those compounds are the bittering compounds. And that's actually where 377 00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:56,320 a lot of the research came from on that connection between the phytochemicals in food is that the 378 00:38:56,320 --> 00:39:04,400 more pest resistant and disease resistant the plant, the more bitter and nasty it tasted to people. 379 00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:12,240 And that's probably why it is not tasty to pests either. It's got all these different things in it. 380 00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:19,600 But those are the compounds that we need for our own disease resistance. Joe Robinson, 381 00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:24,240 eating on the wild side is a place that cites a lot of research related to that. 382 00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:29,360 So Mark, if you could work wonders with any species, what would you create? 383 00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:36,880 Oh, you ready for this? I've got gray hair in my beard. You guys see it. I kind of wouldn't mind 384 00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:46,400 fiddling with coffee and cocoa. And if you can imagine having like Minnesota grown coffee or, 385 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:56,480 you know, Canadian cocoa, and there are variants that are found in high elevations, super cold, 386 00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:02,960 super hot. All we've got to do is go out and find them. So that would take care of a couple of my 387 00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:08,800 things that I like to do is take care of my travel bug, go around the world finding examples of 388 00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:14,160 serious high elevation coffee and cocoa, and then the whole plant breeding thing and start breeding 389 00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:19,520 selecting for coffee and cocoa that's adaptable to cold climates. And you think about how easy it is 390 00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:25,920 to negatively select against, you know, the plants that can't tolerate cold, you just plant them out 391 00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,520 there. And if they freeze off over the winter, they aren't the ones. Yep, they're just making 392 00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:35,040 room for planting more. That's right. There's a little bit coffee and cocoa, that'd be my, 393 00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:40,240 that would be fun. There's a precedence here. I recently learned that quirkets, the oaks, 394 00:40:40,240 --> 00:40:45,600 and to wear until recently a tropical genus. And it was only during one of the ice age ice sheet 395 00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:50,560 retreats, that a group of them started hybridizing and developing cold tolerance and following the 396 00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:56,560 ice sheets north. Cool. Yeah, another thing to that, you know, it's not on the breeding side of 397 00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:04,160 things. But if you look at papaya, it produces 85 zillion seeds per fruit. It starts, they start to 398 00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:10,560 fruit in three or four months, we could start growing papayas as an annual plant in many parts 399 00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:14,880 of the temperate world, just put them in the field to grow for months, it's like corn, you know, 400 00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:19,840 except we're getting papayas instead of corn. With your work with hazelnuts and chestnuts, 401 00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:25,040 do you ever think it might be comparable to the history of Tia Sinte being turned into corn, 402 00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:32,480 that there could be a transformation of those species to make them, like they're still semi wild, 403 00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:39,040 in their form, and humans adapt technologically to using them as a food source. But the guy, 404 00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:48,160 the guy who actually was the one who discovered the link of corn maize and Tia Sinte, was Dr. Hugh 405 00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:54,880 Iltis at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He's probably deceased now, but I met with him and 406 00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:59,280 conversed with him on several different occasions. He just absolutely thrilled with the stuff that 407 00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:04,160 I'm doing. And some of the things that he pointed out to me, this was, you know, a decade ago, 408 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:12,960 anyways, the corn genome is tiny compared to the genome of various different woody plants, 409 00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:17,600 and especially chestnut, he did all whatever research he wanted to do on it. So if you got 410 00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:26,080 this huge genome, the possibilities for recombination are just astronomically more than what Tia Sinte 411 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:32,400 ever had going for it. And that's why we need to do the mass selection, as many seedlings as we 412 00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:38,000 possibly can, as fast as we can, like the ones that, you know, that I've got these two family 413 00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:42,480 lines that they come up out of the seed and they flower right away. That's with the chestnuts, 414 00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:48,320 you know, and the two-year hazelnuts. What if we have, we don't even know the expressions, 415 00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:52,160 who would have thought looking at Tia Sinte that it would turn into the corn that we see, 416 00:42:52,160 --> 00:42:57,360 you know, growing over half the USA. We have no idea what's in there. We just need to roll 417 00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:01,280 the dice more often and see what comes out. And it's fun. 418 00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:06,960 And people like you have done the really difficult early stage of bringing genetics together and 419 00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:14,400 mixing it. Now that you're sharing that germplasm with other people around the world, like that's 420 00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:21,760 the easy next step. And part of what we're also doing too is the first step is to get the 421 00:43:21,760 --> 00:43:29,840 the forest agriculture nursery, forestag.com, is where a network of nursery growers that do 422 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:36,880 mass selection breeding. And we all have all these different seed sites from southern sites, you know, 423 00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:42,400 middle latitude sites, northern sites, we'll gather all the seed, grow them at a couple of 424 00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:45,760 different nurseries in different locations just to get those plants out of the ground. 425 00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:51,920 So when you're buying, you know, tree or shrub seedlings from forestag, you're getting seeds, 426 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:57,600 seedlings that were bred this way. This is how we keep doing it. Now that, you know, 427 00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:02,400 if we're sending out hundreds of thousands of plants per year, how many more new genetic 428 00:44:02,400 --> 00:44:08,000 experiments are happening in everybody's backyards and fields and farms? It's, I think, really, 429 00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:13,840 really encouraging part. And it's an important part of assisted migration. With crazy, 430 00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:18,640 fine climate, we have no idea which way things are going. Are we going to go to an ice age? We're 431 00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:23,920 going to go to a steam bath? Are we going to go to a desert? We need as many genetic variations out 432 00:44:23,920 --> 00:44:29,840 there as possible to survive whatever next year throws at us in the next year, in the next year. 433 00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:36,080 So it's that part of what I like about it is how many people can be involved and how many people 434 00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:41,600 can be involved doing really, really critically important work. Can you tell us more about 435 00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:47,840 Forestag? It's an edible woody crops nursery by plants, forestag.com. 436 00:44:48,720 --> 00:44:57,840 Sweet, thank you. Yeah, we have a network of growers and we have one genius with growing plants. 437 00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:04,800 He can take a seed and turn it into this monstrously beautiful seedling in one year. 438 00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:10,000 So Tom is my primary nursery manager guy and he takes care of the various different places. 439 00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:18,240 We have places where we're doing grow out of our seedling pool. So there's the seedling pool and 440 00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:25,040 this is the composite population of all the hazelnuts that have gone through this program. 441 00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:29,280 All of our species, we do it this way, but I'm using hazelnuts as an example because it's the 442 00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:36,880 most developed. Then out of that pool, we'll take cuttings from certain ones and they're now cultivars. 443 00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:44,240 Well, then we also take seedlings from our elites and then the elite seedlings, we pair 444 00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:50,640 elite A with elite B based on their characteristics. And so those are out in separate breeding plots. 445 00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:56,240 And then there are some that we have taken, we've got seven different controlled cross breeding 446 00:45:56,240 --> 00:46:04,400 plots where we have parent A and parent B that they cross and we know it's an F1 hybrid. We know 447 00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:12,880 who each parent was and we can track the transfer of traits. What is interesting is our original 448 00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:21,440 controlled cross seedling line came out in 2012 and it no longer performs as well as the general 449 00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:26,320 population. Once upon a time, it outperformed the general population because it came from the best 450 00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:33,440 plants. Well, as another 10 years go by, the breeding in the seedling population has continued 451 00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:39,920 whereas the controlled cross plot stays the same and we have exceeded the performance of the 452 00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:45,360 controlled crosses, that original controlled cross. And our other ones, we're still, what we do, 453 00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:50,640 as soon as we start getting seed from them, the controlled crosses, we plant them out. Parent A 454 00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:56,240 gets planted here, parent B gets there, then we evaluate to see which ones perform the best. 455 00:46:56,240 --> 00:47:04,880 And then we take those and for example, our controlled crosses now, the 2012 ones, we only 456 00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:12,720 sell seedlings from parent A because the seedlings from parent B lost the fast, the hyperprecocity 457 00:47:12,720 --> 00:47:18,960 trait. We don't know what happened to it. It's gone. It's not in that. So we don't use parent B 458 00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:24,720 as a seedling source. We just sell those for people to eat the nuts. Another big question, 459 00:47:24,720 --> 00:47:32,080 what is your vision for the future of food in your community? It depends on where my community is 460 00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:39,200 because I'm really becoming an ecological, planetary community guy. And so this planet is 461 00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:46,720 my community. So the future of food, how I would like to see it, is more decentralized, 462 00:47:46,720 --> 00:47:53,680 networked individuals controlling their own destiny and their own breeding of their own plants and 463 00:47:53,680 --> 00:48:02,400 foods and exchanging that material with people instead of controlled by legislation, by big 464 00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:08,240 business and by the academic elite that say, this is the only way that you can do it. And here's the 465 00:48:08,240 --> 00:48:13,680 statistics and data to show that because all they want is royalties from plants to keep funding the 466 00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:20,320 research that they're doing. I don't want to see a food system that's controlled by somebody owning 467 00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:26,720 the genetics to your plants and somebody that's preventing your right to produce your own food 468 00:48:26,720 --> 00:48:33,920 and create your own habitat. I'd like to see a world of decentralized, imitating nature, 469 00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:38,160 restoration agriculture type farms, every hill and valley everywhere. 470 00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:45,040 Brilliant. So you mentioned restoration agriculture. That's one of the books that you wrote? 471 00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:51,040 Correct. That's the first book that I wrote. And if I thought it would win three literary awards 472 00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:57,840 and become an Amazon bestseller, I would have done a better job at it. It was first released in 2013, 473 00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:04,400 or 2013, I believe it is. The basic premise is that we imitate natural plant community types. 474 00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:09,920 And I'll just pick one because I already mentioned chestnuts and hazelnuts. Well, the oak plant 475 00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:15,280 community type, oaks are almost always found with a whole series of other plants with it. Now, 476 00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:21,280 oaks are fagaceae, so aren't chestnuts and so are beets. So they will live with the same companion 477 00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:27,120 plants. We'll call them companion plants. So with oaks, you'll find prunus, which are cherries, 478 00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:32,480 which are either tall tree cherries, medium sized trees, bushes, or prostrate growing cherries. 479 00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:40,160 They grow well with malice and cretagus, which are all rosaceae, they're in the rose family. And then 480 00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:48,400 hazelnut is the dominant shrub in that system, currants and gooseberries, grapes, then grasses 481 00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:54,640 and flowers that grow all around. And who hangs out with the grasses are the herbivores that would 482 00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:59,600 graze on all that grass. And of course, there's so much biomass being produced that there's the 483 00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:04,560 decomposition cycle, all the different fungi that are growing with that. So if we think about going 484 00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:13,120 from tallest to shortest, we can grow chestnuts, cherries, apples, hazelnuts, plums, apricots, 485 00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:23,360 currants, gooseberries, grapes, mushrooms, grass, cattle, hogs, ducks, all in the same place. And 486 00:50:23,360 --> 00:50:27,520 they're all eating different parts of the environment. We can have the animals take care 487 00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:31,600 of the system for us, and then we eat the fruits and the nuts and the berries off the trees. 488 00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:39,120 And of course, eat the fungus. I think I eat mushrooms probably every day of the year. There's 489 00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:46,160 so much wood around here that's decomposing. It's amazing that we can take carbon and turn it into 490 00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:51,760 protein. That's an absolute miracle. So you don't have to eat the animals if you don't want to. 491 00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:56,160 There's all kinds of plants in the system, but the animals are essential for management and 492 00:50:56,160 --> 00:51:02,880 nutrient cycling. And thank you. And I think you wrote two other books as well. Could you give us 493 00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:10,960 a brief overview of those? One of them is Water for Any Farm, and basically describes how to 494 00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:18,000 manage rainfall and runoff on your farm. This is my whole farm. I'm living on New Forest Farm. 495 00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:26,240 I started with attempting to follow the protocols set up by P. A. Yeomans in his book, Water for 496 00:51:26,240 --> 00:51:33,360 Every Farm, the Keyline Design Protocol. And it didn't take me long to realize that it wasn't 497 00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:39,600 really workable the way it was written out. And I found out the reason why is that Australia is a 498 00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:46,480 very hydrologically simple continent with no more than a third order stream. And so the math and the 499 00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:53,040 geometry that describes Australia works everywhere in Australia, but it doesn't work in the Mississippi 500 00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:58,960 River Basin, which is the most complex. I think it's a 10 or 11th order stream, and it just doesn't 501 00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:05,840 work here. It's too crazy. So then my third book is the Water for Any Farm Engineering Field Manual. 502 00:52:06,400 --> 00:52:10,080 So if you are going to manage water on your property with swales and berms, 503 00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:15,920 terrace channels, water and sediment control basin, ponds, that sort of stuff, if you're going to do 504 00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:21,760 that, you better do it right. Because if you capture a whole bunch of rain in a big rainfall event, 505 00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:27,280 and there's blowouts, you can cause problems downstream. So the engineering field manual 506 00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:36,320 explains how you can set up a rainfall runoff management system on your property, following 507 00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:42,720 everything that is written about in that book is compatible with USDA agricultural runoffs and water 508 00:52:42,720 --> 00:52:49,440 management guidelines. And if you run it by local municipalities and states that may have different 509 00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:56,640 water boards and litigation, they can follow that and see that it tracks with USDA and you can find 510 00:52:56,640 --> 00:53:01,920 a way to meet in the middle and design a system that's safe and effective at the same time. 511 00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:07,760 Wonderful. So final opportunity for an end plug. How can people learn more about what you're doing 512 00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:12,560 or get in touch with you if you're open to that? I'm guessing you're pretty busy. So maybe that's 513 00:53:12,560 --> 00:53:17,840 not the easiest thing to do. The way to do that to get in touch with me or to learn more and go to 514 00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:24,320 restorationag.com. And that is Restoration Agriculture Development, where we help people 515 00:53:24,320 --> 00:53:29,680 design and install water managed agroforestry systems. Part of that is Restoration Agriculture 516 00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:35,120 dot com, which is an online course that was recorded a number of years ago that discusses 517 00:53:35,120 --> 00:53:41,200 the basic ecology of how and why restoration agriculture systems work and how to interact 518 00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:47,200 with them in order for them to function properly. And then probably the best way to learn something 519 00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:53,520 quick, depending on how fast you get this podcast out, is to go to Acres USA. I think it's dot com. 520 00:53:53,520 --> 00:54:00,640 That's my publisher. And this December at the annual conference in Covington, Kentucky, 521 00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:07,280 I'll be doing all day training restoration agriculture type systems. And then I'll be doing 522 00:54:07,280 --> 00:54:13,040 later on in the conference, like a one hour, hour and a half presentation on water opportunities 523 00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:19,120 with the water management system. So Acres USA dot com. Brilliant. I'll put all of those links 524 00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:24,080 in the description. That'll be great. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us 525 00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:28,960 and tell us more about the amazing work that you're doing. You're welcome. And thank you. 526 00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:34,400 Thank you, Mark. I think you guys are amazing. And hey, everybody, this is really easy. Get 527 00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:41,360 involved. Plant trees. Plant way too many trees. Way too many. Way more than you think is prudent. 528 00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:46,240 And then the ones that don't do well, let them die. Don't sweat it. We want the ones that 529 00:54:46,240 --> 00:54:51,760 thrive. Before you go, I wanted to say thank you for years ago when I was starting on my farm, 530 00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:56,960 Mark, I sent you an email and you encouraged me to look for local species to work with. 531 00:54:56,960 --> 00:55:02,640 And you were crucial in giving the final push to get working with our local bunion nuts. So 532 00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:08,720 I think, yeah, I'm in the middle of bunion nut territory. So I've been collecting remnant 533 00:55:08,720 --> 00:55:14,240 genetic diversity and introducing a South American species to hybridize the species. 534 00:55:14,240 --> 00:55:20,720 So that's my big life's project to keep. Is the South American species also a bunion? 535 00:55:20,720 --> 00:55:24,640 It's the piranha pine, but it's in the same genus. So it's one of the Gondwan and sisters. 536 00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:32,160 So basically I'm doing a mass genetic hybridization and then, you know, hopefully 537 00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:37,600 before I die, I can send that seed all over the world to help found new domestic populations. 538 00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:41,600 You just gave me goosebumps all over. It's awesome. That is so awesome. 539 00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:46,480 I love hearing that shit. That is so awesome. And one of the things we need to address that needs 540 00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:51,760 talking about is soil. Trees don't need soil for crying out loud. They're growing on the sides of 541 00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:57,120 cliffs. They make the soil. You don't even have to be constrained with good soil. Geez. 542 00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:01,440 No, it's all good. It's good. I just wanted to take that moment to say thank you because yeah, 543 00:56:01,440 --> 00:56:08,000 that's like I'm in my forties now and I have 40 acres of land in Australia in the right location. 544 00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:14,560 And who else would have the time and the interest and the patience and the opportunity to do that 545 00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:20,400 kind of project to try and domesticate what's very much a wild species at this stage. And yeah, 546 00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:25,760 hopefully if I can get it through that first hybridization event, that hybrid swarm can be 547 00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:32,080 the foundation for a whole new crop. I don't think that it's complete, complete domesticity 548 00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:35,440 that we're looking for. I'm looking for a wild product. It's a wild product. 549 00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:43,280 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree there. I totally agree there. Thank you so much again for 550 00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:48,560 your time. And who knows maybe in a few years time if this podcast is still going, we can check back 551 00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:53,920 in with you. That'd be great. And thanks for sending the book. Was it you Joseph that sent that or? 552 00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:59,200 Yes. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. You're welcome. You've been an inspiration 553 00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:06,320 over the years. So glad to talk with you in person. Glad to meet you guys as well. Okay. Well, 554 00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:33,360 we'll catch up another time. All right. Okay. See you guys. See you. Bye. Bye.