In its first instalment for the regular Permaculture Classics videocast series from Melliodora, David Holmgren talks about J. Russell Smith’s Tree Crops: a permanent agriculture, brought to you from the Melliodora Hepburn YouTube Channel.

You may not have realised, but this 1929 classic book was a major influence on the development of the Permaculture concept in the 1970’s. It is very hard to find a copy of this book, but it is worth your effort. Alternatively, there are a number of websites from which you can download the entire book or parts of it:

• From Internet Archive
• From Soil and Health (pdf)
• From the excellent Journey to Forever library (only the Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 24 and 26, but you’ll get the idea.)

Interview Transcript

(0m0s) Introducing “Tree Crops” by J. Russell Smith

David Holmgren: It’s interesting going back to Russell Smith’s Tree Crops, A Permanent Agriculture. This was one of the classic texts of conservation agriculture that was a big influence on permaculture.

(0m18s) Influence on Permaculture and Conservation Agriculture

David Holmgren: Some people actually said that Permaculture One was really primarily a restatement of this classic. Sometimes that was said critically as that it didn’t add anything new. Um, of course, in the 1970s, all of this work, which really dates from an earlier phase of interest in conservation and what we would call sustainability today, uh, was first published in 1929.

(0m50s) Historical Context and Publication

David Holmgren: So that dates it as early in the 1930s, 1940s period of interest in soil conservation and sustainable agriculture. Of course, that was also the time when the first ideas of organic agriculture were forming. And although, uh, Russell Smith is talking about how basically grain agriculture pushed up onto inappropriate land is one of the most destructive, uh, land uses anywhere in the world because of primarily soil erosion.

(1m25s) Core Concepts: Grain vs. Tree Crops

David Holmgren: And that, uh, on so many places where it’s inappropriate to grow grains, there are all these food crops, many of them undeveloped. Uh, of course, all the nut trees, but then things like, uh, oaks that yield acorns that can be fed to animals and, uh, are in fact potential human food.

(1m48s) Global Scope and Research Agenda

David Holmgren: So what he does in this book is go round the world looking at different tree crop, um, agricultures based on perennial plants, based on trees in great detail. And then talks about the opportunities to develop that further and really lays out a research agenda.

(2m10s) The 1953 Edition and Declining Interest

David Holmgren: The edition I read, this slightly tatty one was, uh, uh, published in 1953, and it sort of shows a lot of the correspondence and interest and stuff that was generated in the 1930s and 40s around these sort of subjects. But by the time this book was actually published in ’53, we’re moving into that phase where, um, in agriculture in countries like Australia and the United States was get big or get out. Um, fertilizer, bigger tractors, that was all of the answers.

(2m48s) Revival of Interest in the 1970s

David Holmgren: This is, you know, in 1950, Australia was riding on the sheep’s back. Uh, farmers were making so much money. Actually, interest in sustainable solutions was at an all-time low. And a lot of these ideas, uh, really just, uh, didn’t go anywhere at that time. And it took the revival of interest in these sorts of issues coinciding with the oil crisis in the 1970s, uh, for, for that to come back. And of course, so many people came back to this book, um, via an interest in permaculture.

(3m28s) Acquiring the Book and Information Sources

David Holmgren: I wonder where I got this book. Um, a lot of these early classic ones I, um, can’t remember, but I think this one I ordered through, uh, my parents’ technical bookshop in Western Australia. So in a way, I had access to some of the, the best sources back then in the 70s, um, of how do you get this, uh, information? And I think I’d read various articles, um, in scientific journals that referenced this book. And, uh, I thought, that’s got to be, uh, a book to get, and it was, uh, still in print, um, then in the early 70s.

(4m13s) Pioneer Agronomists and Plant Explorers

David Holmgren: Some of these, um, American, uh, pioneer innovator agronomists, um, who, uh, really saw a lot of the problems that were happening with exploitative agriculture. And, uh, were sort of that one of those early generations of people being globally connected, wrote to colleagues all over the world and had connections and then went traveling to see what the world was like and what could be learned. And of course, they had a camera and took photos. Um, even if the photos in this book are of course, you know, black and white photos, uh, it has some of that, um, uh, plant explorer aspect that was sort of building on earlier plant explorers in the, in the 19th century of looking at all the wonderful botanical resources there are.

(5m14s) Economic Botany and Cycles of Interest

David Holmgren: Um, so this work in the 1930s was, yeah, again, building on an earlier phase in the, um, especially in the 1870s to 1890s, this very strong interest of what was called economic botany. What are useful plants? And of course, permaculture was part of another big wave of that happening in the 1970s. And the really interesting thing about these, um, interests in these sort of things is that coincides with when the economy and the sustainability of industrial culture is very, very shaky. And then suddenly there’s all these interests in, uh, these types of things.

(5m56s) Fossil Fuels and the Book’s Lasting Relevance

David Holmgren: The big picture, of course, is that fossil fuel powered, uh, agriculture meant that these things never really made much of an impact in the mainstream during the the 20th century. Uh, but of course, um, many people can see that, um, this, uh, these ideas have a big future.

(6m19s) Enduring Value and Future Research

David Holmgren: I think this book is still got an enormous amount of information, and it is perhaps a sad indictment that, for example, his analysis and, uh, laying down the research agenda on selection of oaks for low tannin, uh, acorns that would be suitable for human food is still an open field where there’s lots of people who are aware of the issue, who’ve planted oaks inspired by permaculture and, uh, you know, similar ideas in more recent decades, but we’re still waiting for that very substantial work to be done to actually bring the the full potential of a lot of these tree crops to the fore.