Overcoming Bottlenecks in the Eastern US Chestnut Industry: An Impact Investment Plan

The chestnut industry is positioned to become an important growth sector in the Eastern U.S. agricultural economy as well as a significant solution to reducing US CO2 emissions, according to a recent report released by the Savanna Institute. The full report, “Overcoming Bottlenecks in the Eastern U.S. Chestnut Industry: An Impact Investment Plan”, is available at https://www.savannainstitute.org/chestnut-impact-investment-report/

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Parent Category: 2021 Volume 27

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Marketing Agroforestry Products: Lessons from Producers

The agroforestry community has often focused on the establishment, production, and conservation benefits and challenges of agroforestry, but put less emphasis on the rest of the supply chain. A key component of increasing agroforestry adoption is increasing opportunities to connect with markets for tree, shrub, non-timber, and other products grown in agroforestry systems. While some of these crops have well-established markets, identifying, developing, or entering the market may be a challenge for other crops.

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Parent Category: 2021 Volume 27

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Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub

In 2017, Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD) expanded one of the oldest food hubs in the country – Appalachian Harvest – to include an Herb Hub in its Duffield, Virginia facility. The Appalachian Harvest Herb Hub envisions a thriving and sustainable herbal economy in Central Appalachia, where plant conservation is achieved through profitable cultivation in agroforestry systems. The Herb Hub works with a network of medicinal herb farmers across Central Appalachia. The Herb Hub provies many services including providing seed, sale training, and on-farm technical assistance, and even cost-share funding for start-up, shared-use commercial herb processing equipment, and aggregation and marketing services.

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Parent Category: 2021 Volume 27

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North American Pawpaw – Producers, Consumers and Future Market

Pawpaw (Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal) is the largest edible tree fruit native to the United States. Though consumption of pawpaws is not widespread in the modern-day US, pawpaws have been consumed by Native Americans for millennia. Pawpaw fruits have a very sweet tropical flavor and tastes as a mixture of banana, mango, and pineapple (Brannan et al. 2012). The fruit is nutritious and it supplies protein, numerous minerals, and vitamin C (Kobayashi et al. 2008). Pawpaws can be consumed raw or be processed into pulp and used to make food products such as beer, ice cream, yogurt, beverages, and baked goods.

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Parent Category: 2021 Volume 27

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Black Locust: Legacy and Candor

Black locust is a wood of high intrinsic value. Gabor Erdélyi of Robinia Group calls it a triple threat: Economic, Ecological, and Functional. Zach Rike of Robi Decking draws a parallel to Tesla. Today we’ll dive into two businesses whose core product is black locust. How did they get started? How do they market their products? What are consumers looking for?

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Parent Category: 2021 Volume 27

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