ABSTRACT
To maintain the “ever-normal” granary, the agricultural human’s pull historically has been toward the monoculture of annuals. Nature’s pull is toward a polyculture of perennials. This chapter considers the implications of opposite tendencies, with an eye to the serious work involved in healing the split. Nature rewards enterprise on a limited scale. By and large, the patient earth has rewarded patient ecosystems, but it would seem that enterprise has always been rewarded too, though on a very limited scale. The selection of enterprising plant species has rewarded all humans bent on enterprise in food production. The monoculture of annuals leads to soil erosion. The methods almost inherent in the monoculture of annuals require that ground be devoid of vegetation for too long a time, often during critical periods of the year. Trees have many advantages over their herbaceous relatives.
