Chestnuts are great, but can they feed people?

Planting trees on prime farmland might seem counterproductive, because a lot of that land was once cleared for crops. Even so, trees such as chestnuts produce really good food and a whole lot more. Chestnuts are a sweet and savory starch that grows on a tree. They’re a bit like plantains, but grow in cold climates.

We hear a lot about agricultural productivity, but how do we measure it? The main goal of farming is to produce food for people, but farmers think about more than just crops. We can quantify agricultural production with three categories: Calories, Carbon, and Capital.

✅ Calories: We can measure food production in calories, and by how many people are fed per acre. Not all calories are the same (potatoes vs. beef), but we can boil things down to feeding people and growing sustenance.

✅ Carbon: The living world around us is made of carbon, from corn stalks to cattle, to the trees in our windbreak and hedges. The amount of carbon on a farm is an excellent indicator for the overall health of the land, and more carbon often means more bird biodiversity, better flood prevention, and less soil erosion.

✅ Capital: Farmers have to make a profit if they want to keep farming. Total sales have to be greater than equipment expenses, lease fees, mortgage payments, and other costs. But farming isn’t just about an annual profit. Farmers also make decisions based on how a decision aligns with their values, or how it will affect the value of their land, the health of their animals, and their relationships with family and friends.

Today, we’re just going to focus on food production, and compare chestnuts with corn and chicken. Chestnuts produce significantly fewer calories per acre than conventional corn, and slightly less edible food when that corn is fed to meat chickens.

Corn and soy yield a lot of food, but do we actually eat it?

Just 2% of corn and 6% of soy go to direct human consumption. Corn is processed into corn meal, and also into food additives such as maltodextrin, corn starch, and high fructose corn syrup. Sweet corn (corn on the cob etc), makes up 1% of corn grown in the United States. Soy is processed into soy oil, tofu, and soy milk. Corn and soy are mostly milled into feed for livestock. Chickens have a very efficient feed-to-meat ratio, converting 2 pounds of grain into 1 pound of live weight, or .7 lbs of dressed weight. Corn is also fermented into fuel ethanol for cars, and soy oil is used in paints, plastics, and biofuels.

How do people eat chestnuts?

Chestnuts are mostly sold as fresh nuts, to be roasted or turned into stuffing. Chestnut flour is a high-end gluten-free baking option, suited to pancakes, muffins, and breads. The United States imports about $60m of chestnut products each year, the quality of which is variable, signaling an opening for domestic production. There are currently 6,000 to 7,000 acres of chestnuts planted in the United States. Profits to farmers are healthy, especially for a niche crop, and wholesale markets are gradually developing.

We should not draw the conclusion that someone would eat only corn or only chestnuts, but rather that chestnuts are a profitable crop for farmers, that people like eating chestnuts, and that they can be an integral part of a balanced diet. To be fair, it is easy to say that chestnuts are tasty and nutritious, and we should look at chestnuts in the lens of global food production and hunger.

What causes hunger and famine?

For thousands of years, farmers have been growing crops to solve hunger, and corn and soy have obviously played a pivotal role, feeding billions of people. Today, however, hunger and famine are not caused by insufficient food production. In 1925, the earth’s population was 2 billion, and famine was much more common, though made worse by politics and war (India, 1943; Ireland 1845-1852). Now at 8.2 billion, we are still challenged with feeding a large population, and industrializing agriculture has helped people to not starve. Globally, famine and hunger are now caused by war, political strife, and inefficient distribution of food: we have grown enough food to feed all of the people on the planet since at least the year 2000, but it doesn’t get to them for reasons such as war and forced starvation (Yemen, Holodomor, Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward”). Growing chestnuts instead of corn or soy on even 50,000 acres will not affect global hunger – for reference, there are 409,000 acres of pecan production in the United States, and tree crops play a key role in feeding people nutritious food.

Quantity vs. Quality

It is important to look at the quality of the food we are eating as well. In the United States and other parts of the developed world, someone can eat more than enough calories, but still be under-nourished. The top nutrient deficiencies in the United States vary across vitamin C, Iron, vitamin A, and others. 41% of Americans are deficient in vitamin C, 25% are deficient in Iron, and 45% are deficient in vitamin A. Vitamin C supports the immune system, protects cells against damage, and assists in iron absorption from plants. Iron aids in oxygen transport in the blood, and supports energy production and immune function. Vitamin A supports eyesight, healthy bones and teeth, and much more. Chestnuts are comparatively high in Vitamin C and Iron, compared to cornmeal and other starches.

Chestnut alley cropping in Maysville, Kentucky. Hay is cut from between the rows of young trees, and goes to feed cattle and other livestock.

Growing food with trees

Historically, famine has caused social and political strife, and it is reasonable to question how we should be planting trees on farmland. Trees that produce food for humans are a great starting point, especially trees that produce foods high in carbohydrates, proteins and oils, along with vitamins and minerals. Crops like chestnuts offer a great option for farmers and landowners looking at the next generation of tree crops in the United States.

Propagate currently manages 2,400 acres of chestnut agroforestry in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and New York.

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Feeding the world with chestnuts?