Heartwood

Rowan Reid is a forester among farmers. From a teenager surfer wandering the forests behind his home surf break in southern Victoria, Rowan has become one of the pre-eminent authorities on the science and practice of agroforestry: multipurpose treegrowing on farms. In Heartwood, he challenges the accepted paradigm that trees and forests are either for conservation or profit and proposes a radical third way: where the harvesting of a tree for timber is an act of conservation.

Drawing on hard science and real practical experience gained from thirty years of tree growing on his own farm, Rowan shows how planting, managing and harvesting trees can lock up atmospheric carbon, control soil erosion, improve water quality, increase agriculture production and enhance biodiversity, while also offering landholders a financial reward and the satisfaction of growing their own timber. These forests don't look like conventional plantations or reproductions of what once grew on our country. They are something very different, and very personal. 

The growing of trees for conservation and profit, as advocated in this book, is a new and powerful story that can enrich and restore our degraded farmlands and native forests for the benefit of our own and future generations. A story that we can all help write on our landscape, with trees.

SKU 7655. Copyright 2017, hardcover, 204 pages.

About the Author:

Rowan Reid (B.For.Sci. & M.For.Sci.) won the 2001 Australian Eureka Prize for Excellence in Environmental Education for his farmer course (The Australian Master TreeGrower), which he continues to deliver around Australia and internationally (Africa, Timor Leste, Indonesia etc.). A Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne for 20 years, Rowan continues his academic teaching and research as a Senior Fellow of the university and the managing director of the Australian Agroforestry Foundation (a not-for-profit organization). Since the publication of Agroforestry in Australia and New Zealand (1985), Rowan has written or co-authored eight other books and is an internationally recognized leader in farmer education and extension. Most importantly, Rowan is also a farmer and tree grower in his own right, with a family farm in the Otway Ranges of southern Victoria where he helped establish one of Australia's most successful Landcare groups, the Otway Agroforestry Network.