In the face of climate change, are hazel bushes the salvation of the US farmer?

[NickB79]

Yields surpassing soybeans per acre, capable of surviving drought and flooding, with better food quality and biomass production to boot.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9358

A very topical advantage: as we write this, the US is in the grip of a broad and severe drought, already affecting crop prices and raising great concern. Our neohybrid hazels, growing under the same conditions which have destroyed neighboring corn fields, are nearly unaffected- except they are ripening their seed crop ahead of schedule. Experience in a similar drought in 1988 showed they could bear the crop, and also bear their crop in the next year.

Woody crops are also more tolerant than row crops to the other end of the weather spectrum; flood. Flood water that covers young annual plants will generally kill them; but woody plants, with their tops above water, are essentially unaffected.

As we proceed into global climate change, this broader tolerance of environmental variation will prove increasingly desirable.

One additional energy related advantage: woody agriculture can produce food; on the same scale as modern agriculture. But because of the 3X energy capture aspect the same crop can simultaneously produce a biomass fuel component. In the case of hazelnuts, our top recorded experimental yields, based on multiple single-bush data, indicates that food production exceeding soybean averages is attainable, with the nutshell component of the crop available for fuel, annually.

[msongs]

1. and hemp will replace cotton - drought resistant, fewer bugs n pesticides etc etc and cheaper! nt

[AverageJoe90]

4. Perhaps it can even contribute to the repair of Earth's atmosphere.

It can be done, but we will need to do this with natural resources...such as planting more trees(like mangroves!), for example.

[grasswire]

2. I don't see many nuts on hazel bushes.

I assume they don't mean hazelnut TREES.

[eShirl]

3. hazel can be a shrub or tree

it's one of the species in the old English hedgerows, btw

[piratefish08]

5. if there's a bustle in your hedgerow,

don't be alarmed now. it's just a spring clean for the may queen.

dontcha know.