The Nutty Buddy Collective
Acornucopia Project
"There plenty to go around and more to be had."
- Old squirrel proverb
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The Yer-nutty Nations
The Yer-Nutty Nations is the final frontier of the Acornucopia Project. With our home base infrastructure in place and an expanding network of nutteries through promotion with our traveling nut carnival, Circus Quercus, we will have had the chance to really perfect the nut processing system under a number of situations.
We will have familiarized ourselves with vary degrees of appropriate technological models. From there we can make contacts around the world and find interested communities who want to explore an alternative to the destructive "Green Revolution" model.
We will take tithes from all the nutteries that we helped establish, and assemble different scales of nutteries from table top hand operated kits all the way to small commercial scale equipment that will be capable of fitting on a pallet to be packed in a container and sent any where in the world.
Before Europeans, Oak/ Hickory forests were the predominant forests of the Midwest. The Acornucopia horizon includes oak orchards as far as the eye can see in every direction. Someday, when we come back to our senses, the Midwest will be referred to as "America's Acorn Belt"
The beauty of the Acornucopia project is that is is accessible to anyone anywhere in the temperate regions of the world,
Click on photo to watch the classic movie "The Man Who Planted Trees"
The fact that there are over 500 species of oak around the world is a great comfort. What is disturbing is that 85 of those species are endangered. Oaks are generalists meaning they are adaptive and survivors. When we start losing generalists to "progress" it might be time to scrutinize the definition of "progress". What are the elements that are causing our current mass extinctions? How can we reverse the projectile we are on?
"Sun-sidized" vs Subsidized-
A reoccurring theme to that question is man's insatiable appetite for the world's resources. Agriculture is one of the biggest culprits. We are literally gobbling up the world with the farming of government subsidized annual commodity crops that arent really feeding people anyway.
The Acornucopia project offers a profound shift in how we humans can relate to the Earth. Whether its people in rural America, or indigenous people around the world, they are all getting the short, blunt end of the colonial resource extraction schtick. Having access to appropriate nut processing equipment could be an economic impetus for land based people around the world to preserve the trees that provide for them.
The people may have a better chance of maintaining their deep rooted culture anchored in traditional crops that are adapted to their region rather than the shallow rooted whims of global economy crops dependent on expensive cash draining inputs. They don't have to go into debt to buy fertilizers, chemicals, equipment and seed only to loose their land to large wealthy corporations only to turn around and become its marginalized labor force. The displacement of village folks around the world leaves no one really to care for the land, its plants, animals and water. It leaves voids that are filled by faceless, absentee landlords benefiting from government subsides and tax breaks who will take all they can as fast as possible and move on, leaving behind salinated deserts, social degradation, and poverty.
Perhaps the most important part of the whole project is this- relationships. With your support whether it is gathering nuts, offering creative work, or money to help jump start your local nuttery, paying it forward is what fuels the whole thing. We want to gather a family of passionate people who believe that if we have the intention to help others we will be taken care of as well. There is plenty to go around and more to be had if we only treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated.