Tree As A Crop™: Solutions Rooted in Nature

Tree as a Crop™: a simple, down-to-earth concept, yet one that offers extraordinary potential to create ecological, social and economic value. Modeled on the natural cycle of planting, harvesting and replanting conventional farm crops, Tree as a Crop™ offers a way to put trees to work to improve ecosystems, while helping to create a healthy prosperity for farmers and small forest landowners.

Tree as a Crop™  will use the facilities of the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania to demonstrate the potential of trees—both fast-growing softwood and slower-growing hardwood species—to be planted in a field border and utilized to produce paper and wood products. The information gleaned from the Rodale Institute will be used to educate a broad audience, including farmers and landowners, about the rewards of growing trees as a crop.

Environmentally Valuable: Economically Viable
Through this initiative, the Tree as a Crop™ practice will be adopted by more farmers and small forest landowners, maximizing the potential of trees to improve biodiversity on forested and agricultural land, to capture carbon and to provide a diversified income stream for farmers and their communities.

Expected Benefits of Tree as a Crop™ Include:
Creating and restoring habitat to promote biodiversity. Sequestering carbon; releasing oxygen. Mitigating the effects of global climate change. Providing financial rewards for farmers, small commercial tree growers and woodlot managers. Creating healthy and prosperous local communities.

Why trees?

Rooted in the earth, reaching toward the sun, trees spread their leafy beauty to make our world a better place to live. Trees also protect and restore crucial habitats for wildlife. They absorb greenhouse gases and capture carbon. They produce food and fiber for human use and work to balance ecosystems.