Alex Prochaska, Editorial Intern
Visitors gazed in awe at rows of chestnut saplings and a flock of sheep at the Savanna Institute’s Spring Green Campus. The institute held an open house event recently, offering the public freshly-pressed apple cider, live music and a chance to learn about agroforestry and silvopasture.
“We help people integrate tree crops on their farms in ways that are both profitable for the farmer and beneficial for the ecosystem,” explained Renee Gasch, assistant communications director at the Savanna Institute.
The Savanna Institute is a non-profit based in Wisconsin and Illinois which helps people in the midwest adopt agroforestry, a form of agriculture combining crops and/or pasture with the cultivation of trees.
Why trees and why now?
Trees are very beneficial to the oak savanna ecosystem that covers the upper Midwest, said Gasch.
“They filter and absorb water during heavy rain, provide pollinator and wildlife habitat to restore biodiversity, and drawdown carbon from the atmosphere—an important solution for climate change,” explained Gasch.
Gasch also touted trees’ role in preventing wind and soil erosion in fields or along field edges. “Plus, if they plant fruit, nut or timber trees, farmers can add another potential income source to their business,” said Gasch. “Trees make farms more resilient, and it is important in a changing climate with volatile commodity markets that farmers add resiliency to the food system.”
The institute runs a research and education campus in Spring Green, where the open house was recently held.
“Our research program at the Spring Green Campus is particularly unique,” Gasch said. “We’re building a germplasm repository for tree crop breeding at a scale that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the country.”
The institute says the importance of dynamic crop breeding cannot be overstated. An agroforestry educator with the institute gave the example of black currants, a fruit incredibly popular and profitable in Europe. In 1912, the U.S. banned it.
Back then, the U.S. had a massive white pine industry, because white pines were used to make paper products. The pines often got infected with white pine blister rust, a plant disease which relies on black currants as a host. Black currants were banned to save the white pine industry.
Later, a variant of black currants was bred to resist the disease. So in 1966, the ban on black currants was lifted.
The Savanna Institute is trying to revive the market for black currants in the U.S., and see the crop as an untapped source of profit for local farmers.
“Europe doesn’t have grape as their purple candy flavor: it’s black currant flavor,” said the educator. “It’s ubiquitous in other parts of the world. But here, we weren’t allowed to grow it.”
The Savanna Institute stresses the profitability of agroforestry. Jacob Grace, communications specialist with the institute, said crops the institute focuses on—black currants, chestnuts, elderberries and others—have a larger demand than supply in the U.S. However, the institute admits agroforestry has tradeoffs.
Grace said there are some agroforestry crops which produce a crop very quickly, like elderberries, which can be harvested within one or two years of planting.
“But a lot of these [trees take] five or 10 years before you’re getting a significant crop,” Grace said. “People always want to know: ‘What [do] I do? I’m going to be making no money off this land.’”
Grace explained that silvopasture and/or alley cropping helps offset the early costs of growing trees.
Silvopasture is when trees are grown and livestock is grazed on pasture between the trees.
“Livestock need shade in pasture, especially on increasingly hot summer days, and they love eating fallen fruit and nuts from trees,” said Gasch. “Trees in pasture not only help with livestock comfort, they can help farmers increase yield per acre.”
Alley cropping is when other crops are raised between the trees. Grace said certain crops benefit from the shade and water retention trees provide—the institute is currently experimenting with carrots and onions.
Overyielding may be the most reassuring promise to farmers considering agroforestry.
Overyielding is when farmers produce more by growing multiple crops together, rather than one crop alone, said Grace.
Grace said the institute successfully grew corn and soybeans between trees on a demonstration farm in Illinois. The corn and soybeans achieved 90% production, in addition to the tree crop.
“With really minor reductions in what you already have growing, you can start growing trees,” said Grace.
Gasch explained the Savanna Institute has been growing quickly recently because they are providing more technical assistance to farmers.
“We have a whole adoption team, where we work one on one with farmers,” Gasch said.
The adoption team asks landowners about their vision for their farm. The team helps them write a farm narrative to identify resources, concerns and limitations the farmers have. The team also assists with farm planning. The institute’s technical service providers visit the farm, test soil and study land conditions. They help farmers access government cost-sharing programs at the local and state level.
In addition, farmers are provided access to soil maps which suggest suitable trees based on available conditions. The soil maps even anticipate how climate change will affect conditions to come.
While the Savanna Institute wants to help farmers profit, the institute is also concerned with the environment and climate change.
“If we’re not taking care of our soil and water quality, then we’re really in bad shape for the future,” Grace said. “And we believe that perennial agriculture is some of our best tools to help improve our soil and maintain our water quality.”
Perennial crops live all year and are harvested multiple times before death—like the trees and shrubs promoted by the institute. Perennials, with their deep, lasting root systems, make great windbreaks and riparian buffers. Windbreaks keep the wind from drying and eroding soil, and crops from being damaged by airborne soil. Riparian buffers are vegetation near streams, and protect water from sediments, pesticides, fertilizer, and other pollutants associated with agriculture. The root systems of perennials also help to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, continually depositing it into the soil, thereby slowing or reversing climate change.
Grace explained that before the Savanna Institute was formed, a number of farms were already practicing agroforestry in the Midwest. However, many were getting ready to retire, “and all that knowledge was going to be lost.” The institute was formed in 2013, in part, to collect the farmers’ knowledge “and spread the word.”
“As a nonprofit organization, we can take risks that private farmers can’t take,” Grace said. “So we want to take the risks and make the mistakes and then invite people to field days like this where they can learn from our mistakes.”
Why Savanna Institute?
Grace says the name comes from the native oak savannas that used to cover a lot of southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, where the Savannah Institute started.
“Sometimes that confuses people, because it makes them think that we do oak savanna restoration, which is not exactly what we’re doing,” said Grace. “We’re interested in working farmland and working landscapes that are providing people with a profit and…with agricultural products, but that are kind of in the image of these oak savannas that used to be here.”
Nate Lawrence, ecosystem scientist with the Institute, led the Spring Green Campus tour at the recent event. Lawrence explained one of the institute’s current experiments. They are planting chestnut trees, which usually cannot survive the area’s cold weather. Many of the trees will die—but the survivors will pass on a tolerance for cold. After a few rounds of the “selection trials,” a hardy new cultivar will be born, capable of providing farmers chestnut riches.
The Savanna Institute’s income and expenses can be found in their annual Perennial Report.
In 2022, 39.5% of their income came from “Government Grants,” 39.6% from “Other Grants,” 7.7% from “Programs,” and 12.3% from “Donations and Gifts.” “Other Funding” is listed, and it can be calculated to be “0.9%.” Grace mentioned that the institute sells some of the crops they grow—these sales must account for less than 1% of the institute’s income. They truly are non-profit.
Expenses in 2022 were 56.4% “Staff,” 9.7% “Operations,” 5.1% “Education/Outreach,” 8.4% “Agroforestry Adoption,” 8.8% “Spring Green Campus,” 4.0% “Demonstration Farms,” and 7.3% “Research and Development.” “Fundraising” is listed, and can be calculated to be 0.3% of the institute’s expenses.
“We host regular events and everyone is welcome,” Gasch said. “Every September, we have an open house for the Spring Green community (thank you to everyone who came!) This year from December 6-8th, we’ll host our virtual Perennial Farm Gathering with authors Robin Wall Kimmerer and Ross Gay delivering keynotes. If people want to join our events list, they can text Events to 33777 to receive updates.”
In addition to the opportunities listed by Gasch, people can access two free classes on the Savanna Institute website: “Agroforestry Foundations” and “Social Justice and Agroforestry.” People can volunteer to monitor stream water on the second Tuesdays of the month, May-Oct. People can apply to become apprentices, where they will gain hands-on experience with agroforestry, or they can sponsor apprentice opportunities for others for just $2500. The Savanna Institute has a podcast, “Perennial AF,” hosted by Grace.
For more information on the institute, go to: www.savannainstitute.org