Articles, Big Picture, Ecology Benefits
Over the last several decades we’ve seen a tremendous renaissance of grassfed beef and dairy production, as farmers and consumers both learned of the benefits to the land, the animals, and to our own health. The same cannot, unfortunately, be said about pigs and...
Articles, Big Picture, Economics
Picture a farm with ambitions to expand, to produce more food for more people, to make more money, and to employ more people in good, regenerative agricultural work. There are myriad ways of doing so, including stacking new enterprises on the farm like raising...
Advanced, Articles, Grazing
I had a great conversation recently with a longstanding silvopasture farmer which highlighted some of the management decisions that will need to be made with the systematic integration of trees into grazing systems. In short, as ecosystems become more complex so does...
Articles, Big Picture, Economics
I’ve been very encouraged lately to see more and more conservation groups gain interest in silvopasture (in this case, specifically planting trees into pastures) as a powerful conservation tool. These include groups concerned with climate change and carbon...
Advanced, Articles, Economics, Funding, Planning
For those who want to geek out on the numbers, we’ve been working on an Excel spreadsheet. The purpose of it is to reasonably and conservatively predict the value of silvopasture to a farm based on the value of shade and feed produced by the addition of trees to...
Advanced, Articles, Nursery, Species Selection
I wrote a year ago about where we were at with propagation of improved honey locust, which you can read about here. Now I want to catch folks up on where we are with the nursery in general after another year of trials and experimentation. Honey Locust Let’s start...
Articles, Economics, Establishing Trees, Nursery
Willows and poplars are some of my absolute favorite silvopasture trees. They are cheap, easy to work with, very forgiving, propagate super simply, and give shade faster than just about anything else. While they may not have the upside of a Millwood honey locust,...
Advanced, Articles, Economics, Species Selection
I never weighed any pigs at the beginning and close of the mulberry season, but think I can safely say that a pig weighing 100 pounds at the start would weigh 200 pounds at the close. … Three-fourths to the mulberries is safe calculation of the gain. I have had...
Articles, Big Picture, Economics
I did a podcast interview just recently where I was asked why I am a contrarian in my field. I could answer that a number of different ways, but in the field of silvopasture, Trees For Graziers stands out because we focus very little on timber. And I believe that has...
Articles, Big Picture, Planning
You all know the old saying. You can have something done well, done quickly, or done on the cheap. You can have two, but never three. While this may not hold up everywhere, it certainly does in the world of agroforestry, and offers a useful decision-making...
Articles, Economics, Why Silvopasture
I’ve written elsewhere about why we at TFG focus on trees that are meant to directly serve livestock. The summary is this: most graziers want to focus on being graziers, already have too much on their plates, and don’t have the bandwidth for the additional work and...
Articles, Big Picture, Economics, Why Silvopasture
I’ve written before about why we at Trees For Graziers focus on silvopasture, particularly silvopasture for livestock feed. I believe that if we want to see agroforestry adopted at scale, meaning tens of millions of acres, it’s going to be through silvopasture with...
Wolf River Apple (4-6')
$48.00
SX61 Biomass willow
$25.00
Mutsu Apple (4-6')
$48.00