Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
yield, even though the yield from each individual species would be lower than if grown as
a monoculture.
There are, naturally, some disadvantages. Perennials take longer to improve through con-
ventional plant-breeding methods - a fact that Whitefield suggests explains why prehistoric
farmers focussed on annuals like wheat and barley. They also have to devote a proportion
of their energy into maintaining and expanding their inedible infrastructure. On the other
hand, Whitefield observes:
Although we can't harvest all the food produced by a perennial crop, it's in a po-
sition to produce much more in total than an annual. This is because it starts out at
the beginning of each growing season as a full-sized mature plant, with the energy
resources to start growing at maximum rate as soon as the temperature and other con-
ditions are right.
All of the above is textbook knowledge for followers of permaculture. What some seem
to forget is that permanent grass is an entire ecosystem of perennial species (with its own
internal stacking system) which doesn't have any above ground infrastructure to maintain.
Its infrastructure is entirely in the roots. It can therefore spring into life sooner than most
other perennials - to quote J J Ingalls again, it 'withdraws into the impregnable fortress of
west of the UK it never completely retreats, but carries on growing at a very diminished
rate throughout most of the winter. According to Whitefield 'pasture grasses carry out 60
per cent of their annual photosynthesis before ash trees come into leaf, so the two can be
combined in a stack which is more productive overall than either planted alone'. Similarly
there will already be a crop of grass in an orchard by the time the apple leaves are fully
developed.
Besides being 100 per cent edible to animals, grass has numerous other advantages that
one would have thought would commend it to permaculturists: it is highly biodiverse and
resilient, it creates organic matter in the soil, it introduces nitrogen and improves fertility,
its fertility can be moved easily from one place to another with the aid of animals, it can be
cut for mulch, it opens up the ground to sunlight, it can be walked on or driven on when
mown or grazed, it provides the easiest surface for picking up windfalls or shaken fruit, and
it is good for playing football on.
But while it is hard to see why many permaculturists accord such a low status to grass,
it is easy to see why vegans are not interested. Perennial grass is absolutely useless as food
for someone who doesn't eat animal produce. If a vegan wants to grow anything edible
on non-arable land, it has to be trees or shrubs. I have a memory of Ken Fern, as he was
showing me around his remarkable landscape of edible trees bushes and shrubs in Corn-
wall, kicking at the waves of grass licking around the base of his beloved plants, muttering
