TOWARDS A PERMACULTURE LIVESTOCK ECONOMY - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 318

per hectare for hardwood, to six tonnes per hectare for willow and poplar. 17 Again three
tonnes per hectare seems a conservative compromise, yet this figure is over twice as high
as RCEP's estimate of 1.4 tonnes per hectare.
A cord is about 2.4 cubic metres of solid timber, so BTCV's cord per acre is the equival-
ent of six cubic metres per hectare of mixed wood. 18 This is about a third as much timber
as can be produced in high-yielding conifer plantations, and is 60 per cent of the average
annual increment on timber quality woodland. One would expect more than a cord of fire-
wood per year off an acre of Sitka Spruce plantation. However a cord of seasoned spruce
only weighs about a tonne, so I still view it safer to stick to the figure of three tonnes per
hectare, which is the equivalent of about 6.6 cubic metres of spruce or about 3.8 cubic
metres of oak. 19 Three tonnes of mixed timber might therefore be in the region of five cu-
bic metres.
On top of this somewhat theoretical figure, there are all the scraps of firewood which
do not make it onto the account book, but which those of us who go wooding are familiar
with. There are the heaps of sneddings and brash which from a commercial forester's point
of view do not class as timber. There are the loppings of urban trees and bushes. There is
the very considerable amount of small gauge firewood that grows in Britain's hedgerows of
which there are estimated by various sources to be anything between 200,000 and 500,000
miles long, occupying upwards of 67,000 hectares. 20 Much of this ends up fiailed to shreds
and left to lie in the banks and ditches; the 'long acre' which, since it is no longer grazed, is
now the most fertile land in Britain. However, in the 1980s, hedgerow trees were the source
of one- fifth of all home-grown hardwood marketed in Britain. 21
Another neglected source of firewood is the scrub which grows on commons and poor
pastures. The advantage of this kind of fuel, particularly gorse and blackthorn, is that it
burns at a high temperature, providing the kind of flash fire ideal for bread ovens and kilns
(apple prunings or vine prunings when well dried will serve the same purpose). An acre of
gorse in Bedfordshire in the 18th century was worth about five weeks' wages. 22 Nowadays
gorse presents a management problem, described here by the Royal Society for the Pro-
tection of Birds: 'Old and degenerate gorse is relatively poor for wildlife. Meanwhile, the
accumulation of plant debris increases soil fertility, aiding colonisation by, for example,
bracken. The accumulated dead material also presents an increased fire risk.' This is not
a big risk in Britain, although burning overstood heather sets fire to peaty ground; but in
Mediterranean areas, the fact that people no longer collect faggots of scrubwood for their
bread ovens, along with a decline in grazing, is viewed as a main cause of forest fires. 23
RSPB advise land managers to 'Cut the old gorse and burn the arisings and litter in a series
of fires across the restoration to encourage seed germination.' 24 If energy becomes scarce,