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...
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...
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, 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...
Articles, Economics, Funding
As I write in The Grazier’s Guide to Trees, the Conservation Stewardship Program can be a very useful way of getting trees established on a farm, even in states that currently do not support silvopasture. This “CSP Strategy” just got a whole lot more interesting...