Feed Us with Trees

Elspeth Hay is a writer, public radio host, and creator of the Local Food Report, a weekly feature that has aired on CAI, the Cape & Islands NPR Station, since 2008. Deeply immersed in her own local food system, she writes and reports for print, radio, and online media with a focus on food and the environment. Elspeth’s work has been featured in the Boston Globe, NPR’s Kitchen Window, Heated with Mark Bittman, The Provincetown Independent, and numerous other publications. Through her conversations with growers, harvesters, processors, cooks, policy makers, Indigenous knowledge-keepers, scientists, researchers, and visionaries, she aims to rebuild our cultural store of culinary knowledge—and to reconnect us with the people, places, and ideas that feed us. Elspeth lives with her family on Cape Cod, MA.

This book—I guarantee it—will blow your mind. Twenty pages in and you'll be looking at the world in different ways. —Bill McKibben, author, Here Comes the Sun! How would you like to live in a world where biodiversity is increasing rather than disappearing, where more carbon is being stored in the ground than is being pumped out of the ground, where ocean dead-zones and topsoil loss are things of the past, and where diet-related health problems are exceptions, rather than the norm? With irrefutable logic, excellent prose, and meticulous research, Elspeth Hay describes such a world. It is not fantasy; it is the future! —Douglas Tallamy, author, Nature’s Best Hope Whatever are we going to eat on this cramped, ever-hotter planet of ours? Elspeth Hay's fast-moving account wisely tells us to just look up. The trees just might have our backs. —Paul Greenberg, author, Four Fish and A Third Term Elspeth Hay’s compulsively readable book reveals just how deeply entangled we humans have always been with commoning the earth, and why we need to rediscover this lost way of life. Let us re-learn how to steward trees with loving care and subtle intelligence, and they will gift us many times over with untold treasures! —David Bollier, author, Think Like a Commoner, Second Edition Beautiful and compelling. Local tree nuts are the perfect nutrient-dense pantry food. Nuts belong at every farmers market. —Nina Planck, author, Real Food: What to Eat and Why Through heart-centred and meticulous research, Elspeth Hay delves into hard questions about human land management and food production. She brings us lessons from Indigenous Peoples and a manual for a beautiful future. This book gives me hope. —Mikaela Cannon, author, Foraging as a Way of Life Timeless and timely is the promise that nut-trees can feed the world. Hay's book is a story that meanders from savannah to forest and back, visiting the woodlots of visionaries as it makes a powerful case for a tree-studded future of healthy and sustainable food. —Samuel Thayer, author, The Forager’s Harvest The nut tree is the king of the forest. This is the “bush food,” eaten by the First Nations for millennia. The nutmeat supplies folded sugars, essential fatty acids, and first-class proteins. To understand the importance of this in our food stream would make anyone’s life unravel. Thank you Elspeth Hay and Feed Us with Trees. —Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author, Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests Feed Us with Trees is an exploration of the history, present, and future potential for trees to provide staple food for humanity. These questions are essential to a future food system that provides climate change mitigation and resilience. Thank you to Elspeth for walking readers through many of the nuanced questions of yields and more. —Eric Toensmeier, author, The Carbon Farming Solution

• Introduction Part I: Stuck Inside a StoryChapter 1: The Myth of Scarcity Chapter 2: A World of Abundance Chapter 3: Crafting WildernessPart II: The Myth Unravels Chapter 4: Why We Left Chapter 5: Two Fundamentally Different Types of Culture Chapter 6: Tragedies of the CommonsPart III: Emerging Narratives Chapter 7: A Real Tree-Crops Farm Chapter 8: Leaps in Productivity Chapter 9: Remembering the Art of Tending Chapter 10: Adventures in Eating Chapter 11: The Science of Nutrition Chapter 12: Moral ComplicationsConclusion: A Field Guide to Being Human