Badgersett Research Farm: Nuts to the Future! 

There are two things that set Badgersett Farm apart from every other farm in the region.

First of all, the farm is totally off the grid, and has been since Phil Rutter purchased the land in 1978 and constructed the solar-powered greenhouse.  (The local utility company finally concluded that the farm does not ever intend to connect to the grid and removed the unused power pole this summer.)  

Secondly, Badgersett Farm is a center of serious research – “research beyond the cutting edge in genetics,” Rutter proudly clarifies. 

For the past 30 years, Phil has been developing the concept of “woody agriculture” and hybridizing several species of woody plants.  The woody plants he is developing are nuts: Hazelnuts, Chestnuts, Hickory Nuts and Butternuts.

In Phil’s Woody Agriculture system, permanent stands of woody plants are grown in place of annual crops. Each year the nuts are harvested for food.  Periodically (every 5-10 years) the wood is harvested for biomass.  Because the roots are well established, the plants grow back quickly and produce a new crop of nuts the following year.

The advantages to this system of farming are many.  There is no tilling, greatly reducing soil erosion and energy consumption.  The plants are both drought- and flood- tolerant.  The woody agriculture method increases crop diversity, increases the biodiversity of the fields, and provides wildlife habitat.  The plant hybrids are disease resistant, and rely on natural pest control (predatory insects, birds, frogs) rather than pesticides.  Because woody plants are three times more efficient at capturing solar energy and turning into wood or seeds, large scale plantings sequester carbon and could help reduce global warming. 

Rutter purposely chose to focus first on Chestnuts and Hazelnuts because there are already existing markets for the nuts, allowing farmers to more easily transition to woody agriculture crops and for the crops to become mainstream.  Rutter believes it is possible for these crops to play a major role in agriculture as quickly as soybeans were adopted.

At one time, chestnut trees were prevalent in the eastern U.S. and chestnuts were a staple of people’s diets.  Phil has been crossing blight-resistant specimens  of American chestnuts with Chinese, Japanese, European, and Seguin varieties to develop a strain that is resistant to the blight that wiped out American chestnut forests.  This hybrid variety produces nuts a bit smaller than the European variety, with a thinner, easier-to-crack shell and more intense flavor.   The fast-growing wood is strong, light and rot-resistant.  Phil states,  “This is why Africa needs chestnuts — they provide  branches for fire, animal fodder, tannic acid for curing leather, nutritious nuts for food and oil, all without cutting down the trees.”  

Phil has also been growing 3 species of hazelnuts  -European (a small tree), American and Beaked (both bushes.)  His favorite hybrid is a mix of native Iowa and Wisconsin  bushes with the European a variety, producing a cold-hardy, blight-resistant bush with nuts 2-3 times larger than the American hazelnuts. Hazelnut oil is chemically identical to olive oil and rich in heart-healthy fats.  The potential for commercial use  is tremendous—Phil says anything that can be done with soybeans can be done with hazelnuts.

At this point, the potential commercial success for woody agriculture based on  chestnuts and hazelnuts is just that—potential.  There aren’t yet any commercial-scale plantings of woody agriculture.  The next step is to make the plants available to farmers, and Rutter is now doing that, his solar greenhouse working to capacity as a nursery! 

UMN SE Regional Sustainable Development Partnership (Experiment in Rural Cooperation) - a CERT sponsor - partnered with Badgersett in the past to develop a model business plan and a hazelnut primer for farmers.

For lots more technical information about Badgersett Farm’s research, visit their website. You can also order these amazing chestnuts and hazelnuts to eat!   Try out some of the recipes posted on the website, many developed by Phil and his wife, Meg.

NOTE:  Phil teaches classes in Woody Agriculture, which we will post on our Events page as they are announced.

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Related Links:

The Future of the World is Nuts - Salon.com

Agriculture Gone Nuts - AURI

Kill More Trees- As Fast as Possible - Whole Earth Review