The power of weeds to end hunger in an uncertain climate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyzi9GNZFMU

I’ve lived in the woods three years now, and while I always knew that a lot of wild plants were edible, I had never really appreciated just how many, and how many flavours there are out there that we generally never try. I will often walk from a to b nibbling on various bits and pieces as I go - and yes, I know how to ID, and how to check toxicity so I don’t poison myself.

I’ve also dabbled with bug-eating. Earwigs are a particular favourite - they’re sour and spicy, and dried and ground make an incredible curry paste.

Anyway. Turns out we can eat a lot of stuff just fine.

Edit: You can't separate the "concerns about monoculture" from "efficiency" (whether that means outside energy inputs or calorie production or whatever). Every plant/animal species has its own specific advantages, nutrient needs, seasonal cycles, etc. If you use a monoculture then you are necessarily missing out on capturing some advantages (e.g. sunligh) and creating a dependence on outside inputs. Polycultures create a holistic ecosystem that can optimally partition the available sunlight, soil, and water; create mutually beneficial feedback loops, and foster the diverse microbial & pollinator populations necessary to sustain plant life.

Great to have in a short term famine, but definitely not for surviving long term.

The first category which makes up the bulk of our diet are caloric cereal crops, or starchy tubers. In the calorie category it's all about getting the most starch out of a given land area. All these permaculture, food forest idealists, conveniently don't talk much about calories. Starch is a pretty simple molecule/polymer, I wouldn't be surprised if we find a way to synthesize it from energy and hydrogen feedstock.

Then there is protein/nitrogen sources, which today are obtained from animal and legume products. Legumes are undoubtedly more efficient than animal products but are unfortunately still pretty heavy land users. My guess is we'll be eating food fortified with precision fermented proteins pretty soon. Some of those proteins will be mixed with soy, and the synthetic starch and used to produce chicken/fish feed.

And then finally there's the third category, vitamin and mineral containing foods (fresh greens, fruits, nuts etc). This is where "weeds" come in. I think in a lot of ways this is already pretty much solved by glasshouse/hydroponic cultivation and is already being practiced on a huge industrial scale.

At the end of the day I don't think there's really a serious risk that climate change completely disrupts modern agriculture. Yes it will cause massive changes to the varieties, techniques, and distribution of what we grow but we'll be able to work around it.

Efficiency is exactly what you don't want. There is a tradeoff between efficiency, minimising some parameter such as effort or water input, and resilience in the face of uncertainty.

If you are "most efficient" you can't withstand even a small drop in the availability of critical inputs, because you are already using the least amount possible.

What we need is diversity, a large repertoire or store-cupboard of things that we know about and can make use of.

Clover, dandelions, crabgrass, dallisgrass, etc were just part of our yard. We also used it often as grazing for the horses as an alternative to spending hours mowing every few weeks. So any attempt as species control would have been undone by the horse manure anyways.

If you live within throwing distance of a neighbor who does not wish to have a lawn of dandelions, you will be a target of ill feelings for your invasive weed colony.

Lawn grasses have been selected to keep the ground covered and tolerate being walked on and played on. If you don't want to walk on or play on your yard, then there is a wide choice of ground cover that keeps the ground covered all year long and isn't a wildly airborne spreading invasive weed.

You could create a beautiful multi species meadow that would cycle through different plants with the seasons. Or you could build vegetable garden beds surrounded by wood mulch. Or use a low lying no-mow ground over.

I'm not sympathetic to the neighbors who might not like it, though. If their yard's ecosystems isn't resilient then that's their problem.

In Scotland it's called "Sticky Willie" which is nowhere near as rude as it sounds.

Its primary function in the ecosystem is providing long thin sticky plants for children or childlike adults to stick to each other's clothing without the victim noticing, and seeing how long it takes them to figure it out.

Those are burrs. (also: burweed, burrweed ?)