Trees could provide food for stock

Press, 24 May 1977, Page 11

Trees could provide food for stock

Instead of feeding out hay and grain in the winter, give a nut tree a shake, it was suggested to farmers at a Lincoln College conference. Mr Roland Clark, president of the Tree Crops Association, asked fanners to imagine using nut trees to provide stock with feed instead of feeding hay and grain. He said that in Australia 24 chestnut trees, under good growing conditions, had produced a total of four tonnes and a half of nuts and these were being sold at retail in Sydney for $4.40 a kilogram ($2 per lb). “Imagine those dropping on the ground at this time of the year,” he said. Mr Clark was urging the replacement of the present farming system, which he said had become too expensive with its use of energy and imported oil, with trees that would give an annual

crop with a low input of energy. , Even if they could get oil on the farm, he said, it would become too costly to send large quantities of produce overseas. He said that the sort of trees he had in mind would produce a crop perhaps not as often as apple trees, but much more often than forest 'trees. They could be grown to provide food for human consumption, animals, bees, and for energy. On the subject of trees to provide human food, walnuts would produce about 2270 kg (50001 b per ha of nuts or about 1135 kg (25001b)of nut meat compared with 205 kg (4501 b of lamb meat, Mr Clark said. An expert from California where they grew 80,000 ha, had said that there was a good climate for them in Mid-Canterbury and land and water were cheaper. There was no reason why

i there could not be a walnut [industry there. They aimed to replace[ the nuts now imported,! worth $300,000, and also to export, including supplying Australia. Recalling that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr MacIntyre) had shown interest in the potential of tree crops and wished them to make submissions to him about how he could help them, Mr Clark said that they wanted [to see a man working fullItime doing research, conducting a course on nut culture, and encouraging and [organising the growing of [these trees. The first school of farm forestry should be located at Lincoln College, he said. Its principal (Professor J. D. Stewart) was a keen member of the Tree Crops Association.