Sustainable Agriculture in Taiwan

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Sustainable Agriculture in Taiwan

Well it come sup a lot now, so maybe a specific thread is in order. My business/passion is plants, and I am quickly switching to incorporate other living things on a farm. We currently farm, but mostly for plant export, soon we farm for food production to support our family.

So some things to get the ball rolling as many people don’t like the words sustainable.

To start, the problem with current Taiwan agriculture is mostly the excessive amounts of pesticeds/herbicides/water and materials (plastics/papers that are disposable). Especially water even in the dry south in winter can be solved easily and cheaply.

Tiawan is also a great example of agriculture in how it already is using polyculture in a huge way. Just today I rode by a big drainage ditch someone put mesh over and grew luffa all over it. Betel nut farms are used for growing all kind sof secondary crops…peanuts, corn, squash, jasmine, ornamentals, beans etc. Taiwan has it all, they just need to lay off the chems and water, and try to maximize plantings to get the most out of their land.
There is good money off farming, even small land. You can buy a greenhouse and have it installed for $80NT for a 50x20 no problem (ours cost 60k). small plots of land can usually fit at least 2. With typhoons now a worry of the past, summer vegetable production can pull in huge bucks as typhoons wreck field crops.

How to solve weeds: Cover the ground with something you can harvest. Make a weed into a commercial crop, meaning take a commercial crop and grow it as a weed.
How to solve irrigation: Don’t rely on annuals. Also use a mulch, either natural or not. My farm is never watered anymore, I used the weeds to rebuild the soil and covered with a plastic mulch. Weeding needs doing but I fyou start right, only the perimieter of your farm will ever need weeding.
How to make more money with the same amount of sq. feet: fill in dead space with other crops. There are numerous root crops, fruit crops, vegetation crops, sunny, shady, aquatic, xerophytic etc etc. cant fit a fruit in the spot, grow an herb, a tuber, an ornamental. Small farms need money, doesn’t matter if the plant is edible or not so long as someone buy sit. This is a huge learning curve here though.

Taiwan, especially on the lfat areas, has warm weather all year (north maybe no super tropical crops), has enough water to easily last you without question unless you are just wasting it cause you can, concentrated fertilizers are not needed once you build your soil (slow but worth it.). If we build up the soils (slash and mulch is my preferred method) and the only plant material you ever remove from your farm is what you sell or eat, so there is little needed to input back into the farm. Little is relative, but small amounts are very easy to find naturally, and if you compost are even easier.

If all works out, we will hopefully have more land soon to start a new farm from scratch in a better planned out way. Our current farm is one big mess of random ideas and experiments. I learned lots, but its unorganized and not efficient.

So lets get the ball rolling. Set some goals and try to accomplish them. My big goals are to vary crops (more consistent income year round, and more safe), reduce to near zero external energy inputs (fertilizers/herbicides/fish food etc), and boost production as much as possible. You wont break monoculture kg/acre on a species to species basis, but it Is easy to triple or more your total output of all crops per acre.

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I have a strong sense of deja vu here :slight_smile:

How about some pictures, or describe some experiments you did, pingdong? I gather the point of this thread is to swap ideas/results?

Can you describe some examples? I think this is sort of what I meant earlier when I suggested that you could just cram stuff in and it will displace weeds. I got this to work with wheat - I wasn’t interested in the wheat, but it kept the weeds away (except, as you said, at the perimeter). Or do you mean making use of weeds? I love my weeds. They’re mostly these indestructable bastards that can root from their stems, but they proliferate on extremely poor soil and stop it drying out. You can then “harvest” and compost them - they get so big and strong I’m sure they’re extracting nutrients that the average annual could never access by itself.

I’m also experimenting with papaya seedlings. If you scrape out the seeds from a papaya and plant them, they just grow. You get ~50% germination within 2 weeks. I’m going to try planting these as a kind of companion crop; the idea is, they’re mostly skinny little things with not much of a root system and just a few leaves up top (especially if you don’t feed them), so they could protect more sensitive crops underneath from blazing summer sun (and mitigate wind/rain). When they get too big, cut them down and compost them. I’m going to attempt what Sepp Holzer calls Hügelkultur using the stalks/trunks. It’s a temperate-climate technique but I’m curious if it’ll work here.

And yeah - I hate the word “sustainable” because it’s now used as an epithet to take the piss out of anything that doesn’t use oil. As I suggested elsewhere, I think we should just call it “modern” agriculture. We can call the other sort “unsustainable”, “low-yield”, “outdated”, or something similar. We don’t need to take that sort of crap without giving some back.

My goal is to retire from the technology sector within five years, although I anticipate deploying a lot of low-tech on my land, and ultimately marketing anything useful I develop. I don’t believe there’s any money in selling bulk crops to Cargill, but there certainly is from derivative products, spin-offs, knowledge, and vertical integration. I aim to either have a restaurant serving seasonal food (including lots of unusual vegetables) or maybe a cookout area combining gardening/permaculture courses with Taiwan-style alfresco dining (BBQ, beer, lots of noise).

I’m not sure if it’s possible to reduce energy input to near-zero, but you can certainly get it MUCH lower than you need for old-fashioned farming. And then you can get it for free (almost) from solar. I think there will always be a need for pumps, lighting, etc., and I’m thinking of developing a kind of single-blade deep ripper that can be manually guided and driven by a smallish electric motor. That’s impossible to do without some sort of powered system.

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I just read a news about the price of lemons being so high that 2 lemon costs more than 50nt.

Maybe its time to get one of these:

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/23/here-are-your-portal-2-inspired-combustible-lemon-hand-grenades/

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exactly. I will get some pics up this coming week as i plant out some more stuff for weed prevention. I am a very big fan of quality plastic fabric for weed control (plastic mulch). rolls come in 100’ and are measured by width. some it blocks out everything, even with that and no trees, you will only have weeds creep in from the side. An easy fix to weeds on the perimeter is a wall, btu that is expensive, easy to spend about 30mins for a fen every 2 weeks with a machete.

basically yes. but there are a LOT of variables. start with a bunch of species based on light, i find that a good starting point. choose your tall crops, probably perennial trees, and then choose to do crops between the large ones. alleycropping is a common method used today where a typical monocrop tree farm in rows has a secondary crop planted inbetween the rows. better than nothing, but has its pros and cons like everything.

also need to keep in mind water and flooding here. mountains get DRY, the flat areas get WET. im in the falt, and it floods. Flat land taiwan needs no irrigation, period. crop yields will be heavier with irrigation, sure, but it can be managed better. here it is abused cause its free (and i am not saying it shouldnt be free, i think it should…but it cant keep up like the way it is).

so if you can find crops that provide a big tree, another crop that can grow inbetween trees, another that can grow under in shade, and maybe another vine to grow up the tree (ie passionfruit). I think the biggest draw back to this kind of agriculture is there is a massive amount of knowledge to gain to do it successfully, and it often takes a few years to get into the groove i think. not only need to weigh out light and water problems, but also temps in shade vs sun, pests that now become present in constant moist conditions down below (especially fungal), nutrient issues, harvest product and how the new system will effect size, shape, speed, season etc. Its a big huge massively variable system, not a field of a single species with everything down to its DNA fully mapped out. I have only started getting into that myself, we looked for land all day today. I hope to buy this summer, then the real farm in this sense will be created and more species comparisons made.

Different species that are less nutrient hungry and tasty would do well here. Things like tamarind.

with weeds, if its a nightmare to control you just plant a useful weed. so many beans are weeds, they cover and provide good nitrogen source for the dirt, cover everything solid to choke out other weeds. you can pick the beans (velvet bean is a good one for this, and is what i am planting now). around the perimeter i am toying with the idea of lemon grass. grasses really make my life hell, so if you fight grasses (and no weed can beat a thick clump of grass), why not exchange them for a useful one. if you are going to weed, why not make it a harvest? when doing this it is best with tree farms for sure. and i personally think its best not to use a climbing weed. mints are fantastic as well! But with added plants, comes added nutrient drain on your soil. Having an animal farm on site could really help with composting and fertilization. Im a veggie now but will be doing fish farming. But a couple pigs go a long way, problem with people like me is we give them names and a place in our house.

right now i am using a succulent mint, spanish oregano, under my miracle fruit trees, and when they fill in, there are NO weeds ever. problem with this one is its slow to take over and has no good use or commercial value (its purdy), but it stays short and dense. using something worth money would obviously be better, for me its just a matter of its easy to propagate and i need lots.

I am not talking about electricity so much as input inputs via nutrition. Making, delivering, buying fertilizer is a lot of energy. if you loose 1000kg of mangoes from your farm, just that (plus a little) needs to be returned essentially. of course more needs to be added as its not all taken up immediately, but thats what i meant. Not like now here all teh plant waste essentially gets filtered through our lungs via smoke. That carbon is valuable in the soil, and the plants will grow better.

also the way the farm is worked. there is little way out of using trucks to ship things. But tractor use, with few exceptions after initial construction, is non existent. heavy pesticide and especially herbicide is gone. these are huge energy inputs in the average farm. people here already get a gang of grandmas to harvest fields, so its not like there will be a problem with picking the crops (until the hard working generation dies and we are left with the ipod mullets). With this in mind, fewer roads in the farm and more crops inbetween can be planted as there is no need to leave as much dead space for vehicles. I know some places instal tracks (like a train uses) and uses mine style carts to harvest and take out to the packing area. genius and can have things growing tighter.

I am trying to talk about a commercially feasible way of making good coin with reducing wasted time, money, energy, space etc. Not an instant click of fairy tale farming, but real steps in eliminating stubborn outdated traditions.

im gone for the weekend, but during the week if the farm isnt flooded still i will get pics of the dirt now and show you then and now. we have toads and 5 species of frogs now on our farm, there were 0 before with exception to summer floods due to heavy spraying in the area. All kinds of new animals are around the farm now, even japaluras which i have not once seen in the entire township for 5 years prior to that. all that means is its getting clean.

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one thing i want to mention as we have been bouncing around farms this week a lot: bare dirt.

the biggest aid in solving irrigation troubles and also weed troubles (which is also tied into nutrition and pests) is getting rid of bare dirt.

bare dirt exposed to the sun basically just makes the dirt garbage. it kills all the living things in it as it dried and gets exposed. it has all its nutrients washed away the following rainy season due to nothing living in the soil retaining things and also physical structure just eroding.

it also helps seeds germinate, and pretty much only weeds can still grow in garbage dirt without treatment (hence the massive fertilizer use here).

without getting into a lot of detail, there are easy things to do.

plant cover crops, better yet plant cover crops that are useful and call them secondary crops.

this will do a few things:
keep soil alive and well

avoid weed seed germination

prevent erosion and sun scorching

improve composting, very useful for slash n mulch type systems

even plastic mulch, aka plastic fabric, rolled over the ground stops weeds, protects soil from light, makes an insanely good topsoil if weeds are thrown under the fabric, and ya…does very good things. for about $1000 NT (thats retail prices) you can cover 600 square feet of dirt with very high quality plastic fabric. OR, plant a cover crop and spend maybe $1000/acre on seed.

Simply by mulching, irrigation on flat land can easily be cut in half. like i said, i have not watered in years, but people growing water demanding crops will still need to supplement. But dirt that’s already moist compared to dirt that is dusty clay on top, needs far less water. Nutrition is also kept in a constant cycle, whereas dry dirt it tends to just get washed away. This will save on fertilizers a lot as is. And with no weeds, or just around the perimeter, no herbicides. Without so much bombardment with salts and chemicals from above, underground can keep on growing happily and lively and even further reduce need for extra nutrients. when that happens, organic based fertilization (such as compost/manure) is plenty for even heavy feeding crops. There are so many truly simple things, like adding a layer of plastic of covering the ground with plants, that can start a snowball effect in a positive direction.

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Hey, I’ve just moved house and I’ve got a big stack of cardboard if anyone wants to use it for mulching. I’m in Muzha.

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average age of US farmer:59

Australia: 60

japan: 66

highest rate of suicide by job :farmer, by far

graduation degree in agriculture: 2,000 a year

the world is running low on farmers the last 40 years were horrific for farming.Farmers are running out and the supply well soon be out paced by demand.

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probably. And the biggest reason seems to be mostly ignorance and the thought that farming is dirty low class work. There be lots of money in plants, not just edible but ornamental.

food is always going to be needed and people that get in on it sooner rather than later and do the research now…these people will retire early (although its open for debate whether that is due to lots of money or due to being murdered for food in a shortage :slight_smile: )

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Well, there’s a lot of blue collar jobs out there that requires skill, and they pay well too. But the problem is in Taiwan (and possibly elsewhere) people buy into a scam like the cram schools so the idea is if it doesn’t involve math, language, or studying its a waste of time.

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thats certainly not just Taiwan. AS sad as this sounds, other peoples laziness provides huge opportunities for those interested.

once people can live with humanure, the whole system can be nice and easy and closed in. but until then, its all easy as pie :slight_smile:

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Farmers sons and daughters can be farmers if they want too, but obviously lots choose to do something else and see the world a bit. Also studying maths and languages and science can still be useful for a farmer, but not the cram school version of it!
There are plenty of farmers in Taiwan still, even up in the high mountains, having less farmers is not necessarily a problem as they can just merge their farms into bigger holdings or let them go wild again.
Taiwan was mostly forest until 200 years ago or so… So the current setup is not exactly natural either.

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This is one of the things that really irritates me about Taiwan’s farming methods. There are actually plenty of farmers near my place (I suppose we’d call them ‘market gardeners’ back home) who have a good system going, with dense polycultures and lots of mulch. I suspect this is the ‘traditional’ method. They have a massive output - you can tell just by looking at it. Then there are others who plough their field, spray it with chemicals, and raise a pathetic little crop of vegetables that might or might not get washed away by the monsoon rains. When they take the crops away it looks like the surface of the moon. You would have thought somebody would have looked at that and thought, hmm, this doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?

I’ve tried both newspaper and cardboard for mulching and I’d say newspaper is much better. It turns into nice compost after a while, if you heap some vegetation on/under it. Cardboard DOES kill all the weeds, but it seems to kill everything else too - there were loads of termites, but it survived a good six months almost intact. I guess it excludes air too effectively. I don’t like plastic mulch because I found about 100kg of it dumped on my land … and I suspect it ‘cooks’ the soil and kills animal/bacterial life. It’s good for “drowning” tough grasses though.

What do you use for cover crops? I’ve found that natural weeds are great (there’s a kind of solanum, especially, that the bugs seem to like eating) but you can’t slash them in-place as mulch because they re-grow from the roots too fast. You have to heap them and compost them to kill them. I’ve had really good results with wheat and 蘿蔔, but again, they’re not very useful. Peas, pretty good too. Buckwheat, fenugreek, and peanuts seem to do OK but they’re just not big and tough enough to crowd out the weeds - and again, not very useful. Alfalfa, sesbania spp., lablab - mostly failed miserably. Any thoughts on Pueraria lobata? I believe it’s an endemic species.

I’m especially looking for some local species that build tough, extensive root systems. I’ve planted a few tea bushes but they’ll take a while to establish. My land slopes and it’s quite heavy clay/silt, so I need something to pin it together and aerate the soil (I want to avoid tilling). Any good ideas?

btw, just a note on snails. I’ve got a big window-box full of various stuff that somehow managed to get a snail infestation. They were eating some phacelia plants I’d scattered to cover the soil, and bits of rotting leaves, but they were leaving absolutely everything else alone. They didn’t touch the beer traps I put out. Snails here seem to have different diets to the ones back home! Anyone know more about this?

Indeed! Do you have a composting toilet then?

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the ironic part is that often these people who have these lush polyculture type homes are the ones who also make their living working fields of XX crop. I notice that a lot. But ya, these people already practice polyculture everywhere, and many do it fairly well. the biggest issue is labor, but most of the small farms in Taiwan are manual labor anyway, If they just did it on a big scale, voila.

ya cardboard, and paper too once it gets a little thick, suffocates the ground. one thing that is also pretty bad for soil health is anaerobic conditions, which that can make. thats why real mulch (dead plants) are so much better as they breathe and also rot well to make a nice compost layer. disadvantage is it attracts pests and pathogens because unlike proper compost heaps, it wont get very hot and wont kill all the bad stuff. This is less of an issue with many tree crops though.

Plastic will heat the soil, but i have not seen it heat up so much it hurts any living plant growing above it. weed, annuals, trees etc all do fine. its main effectiveness is cutting out light. And because its woven (i am not talking about that sheet plastic that is like plastic bag material) it readily allows water and gasses through, very important. I will admit it is not natural and does not go away, but it withstands direct sun for many years, and i think ultimately (at least as far as i know) it is the best balance of less pollution and effectiveness. cover crops are great, but require work.

Solanum torvum, i hate the shit due to liek you said it grows from teh roots and it also has big thorns. I slash and mulch it. Other reason i HATE it is that it is woody and if its under the plastic and you step/drive over it the plastic can rip from it. Its spread by bats here, and is used as an eggplant grafting stock. so it gets out everywhere. can make the berries in to a curry like in Thailand, but here in Taiwan its considered poisonous…so i have not tried eating it here (i ate it in thailand and it was ok). I dont risk eating things in the night shade family unless its well known :slight_smile:

cover crops i have mostly been using mints right now. When i let fields lay open i am planting beans (velvet beans) and when they get big its easy to kill them and stuff their remains under the plastic to decompose. i would avoid grasses and any other super heavy feeding nutrient mining type plant. when possible.

When i look at a cover crop i first look at height, then their water tolerance and drought tolerance. then i take those and pick out ones i can either make money at or can use myself. THere are lots, but surely the species used on a mountainside is different than down on the flats like me. the mint family has a bit of everything, and i like a lot of plants within it. hence my using them. but they are also kind of heavy feeders. its nice having a crop that isnt a heavy feeder.

locals in rotation often use what i think is a Desmanthus sp. Useless but being a legume it will help regenerate the soil. beans will as well as will much of the fabaceae family. if i switch form mints, i am going to legumes, but i personally dont like growing grains due to how cheap they are worldwide and how large a scale they are already grown. More money in fruit, herbs, vegetables and ornamental.

biggest thing for cover crops i find is shade tolerance so you can grow it right under a canopy if the main crop isnt too dense.

never grown Pueraria lobata, looks interesting.

jesus lighting is really bad going to send this and come back later…our house seems to be a magnet for this storm.

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well, we have been doing lots of work on our farm and getting ready to soon be planting it all up with the final trees. as doing so, and with trying to improve soil over the years, we have been focusing on everything soil lately so thought i would post some refs for others interested in reading about things. i found all these free online, but if you cant pm me and i can send them as pdf except the really huge ones which probably wont transfer due to size.

Always check bibliographies if the article is interesting to you, countless gems in them.

Land clearing & related
Effects of slash and burning on soil microbial diversity and abundance in the tropical rainforest ecosystem, Ondo State, Nigeria
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 4(9), pp. 322-329, September 2010

Mulches, composts, nutrition etc
Litter production, decomposition and physico-chemical properties of soil in 3 developed agroforestry systems of Meghalaya, Northeast India
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 3 (8), pp. 160-167, August 2009

Phytotoxicity of uncomposted and composted poultry manure
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 4(5), pp. 154-162, May 2010

Slash Mulching and Incorporation as Mechanical Site Preparation for Pine Plantation Establishment and Subsequent Effects on Soil Moisture and Site Hydrology
William A. Lakel, III (thesis) August 24, 2000

THE USE AND INTEGRATION OF INGA EDULIS IN AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS IN THE AMAZON – REVIEW ARTICLE [I am highly interested int his genus, and if anyone knows wher to buy Inga sp. in Taiwan plese let me know!]
AGRICULTURA TROPICA ET SUBTROPICA VOL. 43 (4) 2010

Soil Contamination
Effect of heavy metal pollutants on sunflower
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 5(9), pp. 531-536, 6 September, 2011

Phytoextracting cadmium and copper using Mucuna pruriens [this is a common bean in taiwan that grows wild]
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 3 (12), pp. 277-282, December, 2009

SOIL CONTAMINATION
Edited by Simone Pascucci ISBN 978-953-307-647-8

General soil , improvement etc

Effect of cassava/legumes intercrop before rice on weed dynamics and rice grain yield at Badeggi, Nigeria
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 5(4), pp. 264-267, April 2011

REPORT ON SOIL CONSERVATION, SOIL IMPROVEMENT AND EXTENSION FOR THE SONG DA WATERSHED AND CARE PROJECTS
SOCIAL FORESTRY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT (SFDP) SONG DA March 1997

Seasonal distribution of soil fungi and chemical properties of montane wet temperate forest types of Tamil Nadu
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 4(6), pp. 190-196, June 2010

SOIL ECOLOGY by Patrick Lavelle Print ISBN: 0-7923-7123-2 (great book, hard read but great reference

Introduction to The Soil Foodweb - nto that great but big words and big pictures make it ok when bored.
Steve Diver (through ATTRA)

About Death
Fungicides
Edited by Odile Carisse ISBN 978-953-307-266-1

HERBICIDES AND ENVIRONMENT
Edited by Andreas Kortekamp ISBN 978-953-307-476-4

HERBICIDES, THEORY AND APPLICATIONS
Edited by Sonia Soloneski and Marcelo L. Larramendy ISBN 978-953-307-975-2

PESTICIDES - THE IMPACTSOF PESTICIDE EXPOSURE
Edited by Margarita Stoytcheva ISBN 978-953-307-531-0

PESTICIDES IN THE MODERN WORLD – EFFECTS OF PESTICIDES EXPOSURE
Edited by Margarita Stoytcheva ISBN 978-953-307-454-2

PESTICIDES - FORMULATIONS, EFFECTS, FATE
Edited by Margarita Stoytcheva ISBN 978-953-307-532-7

Selective herbicide strategies for use in Australian desmanthus seed crops [Desmantus sp. i believe is used in Taiwan for soil improvement as well, though i have not actually ID’d the species yet]
Tropical Grasslands (2005) Volume 39, 171–181

Other
Bioindicators in sustainable management of tropical forests in India
African Journal of Plant Science Vol. 2 (9), pp. 099-104, September 2008

Aqua____ related
Producing tilapia feed locally: A lowcost option for small-scale farmers

Farming freshwater prawns: A manual for the culture of the giant river prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii)
FAO FISHERIES TECHNICAL PAPER 428

post up more if you have some. these are some pdfs i saw inthe computer that were of some use at some point.

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About time this thread was revived.

Inga edulis: IIRC, the seeds are very short viability so you would literally have to take a plane to S.America, pick the beans off the tree, and fly back again within a week. I’ve been wanting to get hold of these too!

Desmantus: I have one of these growing in a pot, from seeds I collected. Well - I guess that’s what it is. I initially assumed it was some kind of acacia.

Mucuna pruriens: I’ve not seen this anywhere growing wild, but only this afternoon I saw pueraria in flower. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, the flowers are very distinctive. I’m going back tomorrow to get some cuttings :slight_smile: I’ve heard good things about mucuna, but the idea of itchy stems puts me off growing it. I planted lablab a couple of weeks ago (now easily available in Taiwan - it wasn’t last year!), which I prefer since it’s attractive and edible.

You mentioned tamarind elsewhere. I’ve got two little tamarind trees, one outside, one in a pot. Personally I don’t think they’re very useful; apparently they’re slow-growing and shade out everything underneath. OTOH I like tamarind, although I guess I’ll need to wait 6-7 years before I see any.

Other stuff doing nicely (so far): moringa oleifera, sesbania sesban, lotus tetragonolobus (next summer I want to try the similar psophocarpus tetragonolobus). I also have bags of trifolium alexandrinum and lupin seeds which I’ll try over the winter.

My book recommendation: humanurehandbook.com/. This guy has done a quite incredible amount of research into the composting of poo. He’s extruded a solid and impressive book on the subject. Also a good reference for composting in general. If you don’t want to pay for the book it’s available on the website chapter-by-chapter, for free.

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I have friends in various south american countries that have tried sending me plants but were all intercepted and that was before i knew about hte work around way of getting htem through without certificates and having them spray them for you. need to try again, i have just been super lazy on the import thing lately. If you find any, let me know. And if i get any i will try and remember you.

the “Desmanthus” you have, is that like the ones they completely fill the fields with as part of rotation? i know i have the name i thought it was somewhere when i was interested in that genus for land reclamation (before i realized how much of a non issue that is for much of taiwan hah). i cant for the life of me think what it is, need to start reading more again. I dont think there is an Acacia in the world that will grow that fast either. flowers are different as are the leaves. Though the Acacia here are pretty trees, just get big and probably not the best for a farm.

somewhere i read that Taiwan is one of the biggest growers of M. pruriens. not the biggest, but one of the big nations growing it. I have lots growing now in different stages of development. i dont find the stems itchy, but the fruits sure are! the seeds are edible as far as i know.

Tamarind does excellent here. It shades, sure, but not heavily! I actually grow it due to its light shading nature. All the trees i saw in Burma and Thailand were not heavy shaders, at least when you compare them to other fruit trees like lychee, mango, wax apples etc. They are also perfect for mixed crops as they are nitrogen fixers and i am spacing them in between mango and lychee right now and will be growing shade crops under them. Will be growing various Piper species up the trunks as well once they get a bit bigger. biggest one i have now is about 6’. I like them as a fruit crop as their fruit has good storage life, but as with so many edible legumes, their fruit are prone to insect larvae attack…I have not started contemplating that issue yet as its not going to be a year or 2 before i see fruit. While in the middle of burma in the summer (= very damn hot!) many “acacia” trees were about the only form of shade around, and i have loved the Fabaceae family ever since! Its a bright shade, takes the edge off the sun, but can certainly grow crops under them. I would say coffee would be ideal here.

Do you by chance have any knowledge on cashew? Mine flowered early this year, but not fruit development at all. the ovary didnt even bother to swell in the slightest. i read that color change of the flower means pollination, but i dont htink so as mine changed but gave no indication of being fertilized.

Recently i have also been interested in the idea of grafting rambutan and pulsan onto lychee, you ever heard of this? they all grow VERY good here, but finding rambutan seed isnt easy (although plants are becoming available more locally) and lychee is a cheap easy plant to source for potential root stocks.

All this fruit talk makes my feet itchy for a vacation/seed collecting trip!