I recently heard of a new movement to increase crop yields and decrease toll on the environment by switching from annuals to perennials for certain crops, the biggest problem being that there are no domesticated perennials to switch to. Only this isn't a new movement. It's been around since the 70's (so I assume some of you have heard of it before) and scientists have been working on domesticating perennials since, but I've never heard of it. Perhaps it's just where I live, but this seems to me like one of those major projects that gets very little media attention despite the fact that it's beneficial from whatever standpoint you want to look at: global warming, economics, environment, whatever. And when no one ever hears about something, no one pushes further research for it, so it takes a long time to go anywhere (and work in perennials takes a long time anyway). For those of you who are wondering, I'm not entirely sure what my point here is. I think I'm mostly just trying to inform those of you who don't know of the fascinating work scientists are doing out there that we may otherwise never hear about on TV any time soon.
There have been perennial crops in the US for a long time, but they may not be what you like best. Rhubarb, asparagus, berries, sunchokes and similar root crops, fruiting trees ... it's a pretty long list. Look through some of the smaller seed companies' catalogs and you may be surprised what you find.
I said certain crops. Annual cereal grains, legumes, and oilseed plants represent about 80% of crops harvested worldwide.
a plant that comes back year after year. an annual is planted annually. A perennial comes back perenially. I wonder if self-seeding could help on this, but as a row crop, I'm having difficulty imagining the plants being in a position for mechanical harvesting. since we take virtually every seed when we harvest, would it matter if the plant could come back?
Actually, isn't the needed seed to be saved for next year, but a small percentage of the yield? I don't see the difference, other than the "laziness factor" hoping that the plant will grow back year after year, without having to be planted. Which I rather liked about some wild blackberry bushes behind my old apartment. I picked a bunch and froze then, thinking almost that I was "getting over" on the meddlesome government. "Yeah, why don't you try to tax this, which you don't know about?" Finally I can help myself to something, without paying endless tax after endless tax?
