Yes, convert that lawn! Two plants worth considering are Prunus persica ‘Kernechter vom Vorgebirge’ and Amelanchier × lamarckii. I’ve heard great things about them, but they were growing in SW Germany, so do your own research first. What do you use for a ground cover? Clover can be a valuable ally in the fight against the grass.

That is an impressive agroforestry system. :) Which chestnut species do you grow?

You have a ton of potential in South Florida! (Until sea level rise floods everything, of course.) Will you add more fruit trees? The nurseries in your area have some amazing options. Which mangos and avocados do you grow? I’m curious about the quality of ‘Monroe’ and ‘Oro Negro’ avocados.

It’s strange what’s happening with your avocados. Do you know if the bloom timing of avocados in your area has changed at all? If they were previously getting pollinated by trees that now bloom at different times, then that could explain the lack of fruits.

If it’s a choice between banana and grass, I recommend banana 100%. Pine Island and Excalibur both sold Dwarf Namwah last I checked, and that should be very productive. Excalibur also sells FHIA-18, which doesn’t taste so much like banana. I recently posted about it here, though the linked PDF is in spanish.

Off to a good start! Do you know what else you want to add? Forelle pear might be worth considering for your area, but do your own research.

Sounds like you’ve got a great thing going! Maintaining fertility by mulching with cut vegetation and composting “waste” is really important. How big is your fruit forest? Do you plan to diversify further and fill up the field? How small do you plan to keep the trees? I’ve found that pruning tall trees with a pole saw is really tedious and exhausting. Do you have a particular method that’s easier?

a berry pie without any sugar but what’s already in the berries shouldn’t be too bad.

Wolves have been observed to subsist on almost exclusively blueberries during the height of the season in Yellowstone, so I’d say the glyphosate residue in the flour is much more of a risk than whatever fruit is in the middle.

THIS is the actual definition of Veganism, directly from the people who coined the term:

That definition is from 1988, so it’s questionable whether it came “directly from the people who coined the term” in 1944. Here is a re-publication of the 1951 Leslie Cross definition:

“The object of the Society shall be to end the exploitation of animals by man” and “The word veganism shall mean the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals.”

Allegedly someone read The World Peace Diet (by Will Tuttle) to Donald Watson on his deathbed, and Donald Watson said that the book encompassed everything that he intended when he founded the Vegan Society. Make of that what you will.

Probably ‘Silk’, AKA Latundan, from the Philippines.

Let us not forget that this is primarily due to deforestation, whether directly (due to loss of tree cover for moisture retention) or indirectly (due to climate change).

People are working on it.

We need both, obviously. Ending animal agriculture is the most practical way to achieve it.

Did you ever find an answer to this re: reforestation projects? Could be useful to relocate termites in order to introduce the microbes to grasslands.

Someone has to be the first.

Hello and thank you for your thoughtful comment. In general, I agree. I was not insinuating that Dipteryx oleifera trees (or plants in general) are only valuable as a source of food. They provide a myriad of ecosystem services, and all life in the forest is connected and interdependent. I simply meant that while some fruit-bearing plants are widely planted outside of their native range for food (durians, mangos, peaches, and probably most things that we both eat), this particular tree is probably not worth planting for its fruit alone (especially considering its size), and therefore it doesn’t make sense to grow it outside of its native range as one might do with some other fruit trees. Within its native range, it could be worth planting for the sake of restoring the forest, in which case eating the fruit would be a bonus.

Of course, no animal is food.

It’s more beautiful than delicious, honestly. The fruit doesn’t have a very strong flavour, and the spines and seeds make it difficult to eat many of them out of hand, BUT blended with other things, it can be quite nice.

There are people trying to reforest the Amazon pasture lands with food forests which should reduce the incidence of fires as well as providing many other benefits.

The Dunstan chestnut is a traditional hybrid developed decades ago. It wasn’t exactly the same as the original American chestnut (Castanea dentata), but was that really such a problem?

!fruit@slrpnk.net welcomes you!

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Even if you cover the whole planet in forests, there is a finite amount of fossil fuels you can burn before it is negated.

I think that this is the crux of the matter, and of course you’re right. The total amount of carbon stored in fossil fuels is (presumably, without searching for the numbers) much greater than the amount currently stored in living organisms, so there is a finite amount of fossil fuels that can be burnt before the carbon emissions exceed the capacity of forests/vegetation to capture it. Do you know what that “finite amount of fossil fuels” would be? From what I have seen, it is quite large, though humanity is rapidly approaching it. What’s needed is for the rate of emissions to be reduced below the rate of capture, and so a reduction in fossil fuel use is urgently needed, but I wouldn’t say that completely eliminating fossil fuel use is more important than protecting forests. All that’s needed in the long term is for carbon capture to at least equal carbon emissions. In the short term, the planet is already close enough to the “point of no return” that reforestation is necessary in order to bring down levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of how quickly fossil use ceases. It has to be both. Burning fossil fuels is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Cutting down forests for biofuel is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Deforestation for biofuel would be sustainable for a much larger population than would burning fossil fuels (due to the extremely slow renewal rate of fossil fuels), but we’re past that point. There’s not enough land. Either energy consumption needs to drastically decrease, or non-combustion sources of energy are needed.

I get the impression that we are essentially “on the same side” and just quibbling over details. You make an excellent case against fossil fuels! Looking at it in terms of the broader carbon cycle makes the necessity of ending fossil fuel use very obvious even ignoring any concerns about pollution, destructive extraction practices, or other harmful effects.