Here's a very long toot on the virtues of chestnuts as a food source (#WhyChestnuts) by @BuildSoil : https://kolektiva.social/@BuildSoil/109304851558989306
I'm curious if any of my #FoodSystems or #Agroecology followers have thoughts on this.
I like the idea of nut trees in general, but I'm skeptical of so much focus on one species, and I'd love to hear commentary from others.
@dynamic The easy caution against a one species approach is species specific disease or insect destruction. Chestnut blight almost wiped out the North American chestnut (wikipedia.org).
Blight is discussed by @BuildSoil in the thread you linked.
That's definitely a legitimate concern. I think my feeling of skepticism is more general, though: I get a "silver bullet" vibe from the argument, and I'm hoping that folks who have delved deeper into these kinds of questions that I have might help illuminate the strengths and weaknesses in the idea.
@dynamic @lwriemen
Chestnut is insect pollinated as well as wind pollinated I believe, I hear chestnut honey is delicious. I think it's really the appeal of the sheer quantity of food that individual chestnut trees can produce over a lifetime that gives them cred. Its easy for people used to monoculture to imagine as an alternative food source, even if it wouldn't be quite the panacea in practice.
@blowdart_the_police @dynamic @lwriemen is primarily wind pollinated, which works totally OK in all of the contacts that it evolved in.
@blowdart_the_police @dynamic @lwriemen the nice thing is it hazelnut fit well underneath chestnut trees you can do both
@lwriemen
Somewhere (possibly resilience.org?) I recently saw an argument that hazelnut is a good choice because it is wind-pollinated and so doesn't rely on pollination by commercial honeybees.
Personally, I'd like to see more embrace of interdependence with wild pollinators, but it does make sense to include wind pollination in the mix so that we have fallbacks.
(I also do not know how chestnut is pollinated.)