It took a lot of work for me to be able to present this work by one of the largely unknown fathers of French permaculture: Marc Bonfils. If there are any areas that you don't understand, please let me know. This text is old, but in my opinion, still very valid.
The Indians of the Sacramento and San Joaquim valleys (California) provide a perfect example of an economy based on the harvesting of oak acorns, and this with a high population density.
The Minok tribe harvests no less than 85 species, but only one resource forms the basis of the Indians' diet: acorns from several oak species, which take about a month to harvest and constitute more than 50% of their food resources. After being transported in basketry and dried, the acorns are stored either inside the house, in small baskets, or outside in a granary on stilts, which can itself be a basketry. This way of life allows a density of 40 inhabitants per 100 km², which is much higher than that of all other hunter-gatherers and even that of the farming Indians of the eastern United States (less than 30 inhabitants per 100 km²).
NB: before the arrival of the Spanish, central California had the densest population in all of America north of Mexico.
Frank Latta, an ethnologist who devoted a large part of his life to studying the Yokuts, estimated that an Indian family consumed an average of 500 to 1000 kg of acorns per year, and although an Indian family tends to have more members than our own, the quantity of acorns is still relatively large.
Thus, forest trees have been nurturing to the extent of the fields: it has been argued that the Neolithic peoples of the oak zone originally had the acorn as their main food.
In many Swiss lake dwellings (or palafittes), acorns have been found ground into flour. In the Swiss prehistoric sites dating from the Neolithic period, as well as in Châlons-sur-Saône and Annecy, acorns have been found in the form of flour, along with millet, spelt, soft wheat, barley, etc., as well as raspberries, pears, and other fruits. Millet, which was the main cereal crop at the time, was grown under a park with oak trees, and the acorns were carefully gathered.
Later Ovid and Strabo of Amassae mention acorns as the usual food of many peoples.
In the limestone hills of Israel, acorns were also an important food resource up to the time of Christ, and it is mentioned in Hist Eccl that St. Matthew fed mainly on sweet acorns. Our "Gallic ancestors" also built up important reserves for the winter.
In the Middle Ages, the Crimean Tartars lived on acorn bread and in 1930 the inhabitants of the village of Ogliestre in Sardinia continued to eat acorn flour cakes.
In this way, oak acorns have been consumed by mankind for thousands of years.
Since the prehistoric inhabitants of Jarmo in the rolling hills of Iraq 6700 BC acorns were an essential part of the diet until the beginning of the 20th century.
In Europe acorns continued to play an essential role in village life in the Middle Ages and they continued to play an important dietary role in Spain, Sardinia, Greece and Italy until the early 1900s, providing at least a quarter of some people's dietary requirements. In North Africa today, acorns continue to play an important role in the Atlas Mountains inhabited by Berber tribes.
In Morocco, acorns are the essential ingredient of a special couscous that they have been making for centuries.
In Algeria, the Kabyles also eat a lot of sweet acorns in winter (the fruit of the holm oak or yeuse, Balotta breed). NB: In North Africa, the holm oak or yeuse rac. Balotta climbs to an altitude of 1600 m in the Moroccan Atlas.
Its evergreen leaves make it a tree of the hot and dry regions of France up to 600 m altitude.
It is fairly abundant in south-eastern France and Corsica, although it is also found in small numbers in the dunes of Gascony, the Charentes, the Dordogne, and even the Causses, and as far as the Vendée and Poitou.The holm oak or yeuse race Balotta is widespread in North Africa and Spain, but is sporadic in France.The holm oak is only 15 m high at most. Sweet acorn-producing oaks, like the yeuse (Quercus ilex race Balotta), are Mediterranean forest trees that are drought-resistant and undemanding in terms of the nature of the soil, whether limestone or not, and their sweet acorns have the same use as chestnuts and are, as in the time of our Gallic ancestors, gathered by the Berbers and kept at home for human consumption. In Kabylie, in years of shortage, the other acorns of ordinary holm oak or ordinary cork oak are eaten, as they are too rich in tannins and burn the stomachs.NB: open field oak orchards are also cultivated in Sardinia, in the middle of ploughed fields. In Northern France, the sessile and pedunculate oaks produce acorns that are not fit for human consumption (without special preparation).
In Europe, among the oaks that can produce sweet acorns:1)
- the holm oak or yew Balotta race, up to 16 m high, widespread in North Africa and Spain, sporadic in France.
- Tanzin oak: 10 to 20 m high.2)
- the pubescent oak: 15 to 20 m high maximum, widespread on the arid limestones of the
of the Southern Alps, up to 1600 m in altitude
- the "Virginiliane Tebore" variety is still very popular in Southern Italy
3)
- the cork oak: 10 to 15-18 m high, very cold4)
- the Verinois oak: 5 to 7 m high maximum, limestone scrubland5)
- the farnetto oak
the farnetto oak: an important tree whose range extends from southern Italy to Asia Minor.
All of these oaks can produce sweet acorns, but the 30 to 40-45m high oaks have more or less bitter acorns.NB: see fodder trees.In Mediterranean countries, oaks often bear sweet fruits that are as tasty as chestnuts, and which were once very important in times of famine, and which are still sometimes used locally by the population.
In fact, people did not stop using oak acorns until the introduction of potato cultivation in Europe.
In our temperate regions, only one fruit tree has really retained its role as a food source: the chestnut tree. In Italy, the surface area occupied by chestnut trees is estimated at 660,000 hectares, giving an average annual production of 5 million quintals, i.e. 8 quintals per hectare per year, i.e. almost as much as many Italian wheat fields in 1930. In Périgord, Corsica and the Cévennes, chestnuts were the winter bread, forming the basis of the winter diet.
The food value of acorns is very high:
Acorns
Water 8.7 to 44.6%
Carbohydrates 32.7 to 89.7 %
Protein 2.3 to 8.6%.
Fat 1.1 to 31.3%
Tannins 0.1 to 8.8% Kcal/100g
Kcal/100g 265 to 557
Chestnuts
carbohydrates 40%
Protein: 4%.
fat 2.6%.
Potatoes
carbohydrate 20%
protein 1.6 to 2%
lipids 0,5%.
Ratio of essential amino acids: Limiting factors :
methionine: 0.27 to 0.31
lysine: 1.19 to 1.51
The relative richness of acorns in lysine makes them an interesting supplement to grass cereals.
VITAMINS :
The vitamin C content of some varieties of acorns is as high as 55 ml/g, equivalent to that of lemons.Only one variety of acorn has been (truly) analysed for vitamin A content: 180 IU vt A / g or 180,000 IU vt A / 100gThis is richer in vitamin A than carrots, so that 50g of these acorns would be sufficient to meet the minimum daily requirement of vitamin A. Acorns could therefore play a vital role in countries like Pakistan where vitamin A deficiency is widespread, causing blindness and various eye diseases. Acorns could therefore play a vital role in countries such as Pakistan where vitamin A deficiency is widespread, causing blindness and various eye diseases.Finally, some acorn species may even be more calorie-rich than wheat or maize - up to more than 2600 Kcal/lb (500g) wheat contains only 1800 Kcal/lb - making it very interesting for helping malnourished people around the world, especially those living on slopes susceptible to erosion.
In addition, selected high-yielding species can produce a lot. J. Russel Smitch, the author of "Tree crops", estimated in 1952 that a commercial oak orchard could produce 1400 pounds of acorns/acre, or about 18 cwt/ha of acorns. In fact, recent studies have already shown that natural oak forests are capable of yielding up to 20,000 lbs/acre in a good year, or a crop that can reach 250 cwt/ha (25t/ha) in a good year.
Moreover, oaks growing by themselves in isolation are already capable of producing very high yields per tree. For example, in the USA, where cereal crops, especially maize, cause the loss of more than 50 tonnes of soil per hectare per year through erosion in the Midwest and up to 200 tonnes per hectare per year in certain regions, not to mention all the land that is sterilised by salt in irrigated crops (maize).
However, the deep roots of oak trees, up to 30 to 40 m deep (record under oak trees, measured in France on fissured bedrock: 150 m deep, these roots are reported by speleologists, they see water running down these roots, the tree is therefore a quite extraordinary plant, it is The water manager), these roots make it capable of producing in semi-arid regions, where maize requires repeated irrigation which ends up causing the salinisation of the soil and finally leads to the sterilisation of the land.
More than 50 million acres, or 25% of the world's irrigated cropland, have already been ruined by salinisation, so oaks can play a prominent role in restoring this devastated land (reforestation and afforestation integrated with agriculture), and one of the most promising species of sweet acorn oak can tolerate salinisation levels of 2% or more. In Algeria, where barren hills currently dominate the landscape, there is a long history of acorn use (especially in Berber times).
The decline of the forests, which were destroyed by goats, sheep and over-cutting as a result of the Arab invasions and subsequent over-grazing, was replaced by acorns.
Acorns were replaced by annual cereal crops, whose annual ploughing caused severe erosion and continued destruction of the originally prosperous land. The forests that once covered 1/3 of the area now occupy less than 1%. (This leads one to believe that it is not only the advance of the Sahara but also its birth that follows and has always followed these same stages
-
war-deforestation-labour-abandonment). In the USA, villagers across the Midwest had included acorns as a major part of their diet until 1900, and would have continued to use them if the oak forests had not been destroyed by clear-cutting (firewood) and overgrazing.There is an urgent need to reforest all the devastated and denuded land: water does not come from the sky, it comes because trees are there to manage it. NB: various species of sweet acorn oak would also be suitable for reforesting the hillsides of the Far East and Australia.
Quercus mongolice, which grows in Japan, China and Korea, is sweet and very palatable, while Quercus gambelli oak may be of interest in Australia because of its resistance to drought and saline alkaline soils.
PROCESSING BITTER (TANNIN-RICH) ACORNS
Bitter varieties should be left to soak in water to leach out the tannins, in the same way that bitter cassava poisons (prussic acid: cyanide) and soya beans are leached out.
The more bitter the acorns, the longer the flour must be left to soak, and if you are in a hurry, then you must add hot water.
Among the Indians of California (Ohlones, Pomo,...) acorns constitute more than half of their diet. The base of each meal was usually acorn porridge, which was cooked with hot stones that boiled the water in a watertight basket, into which the acorn flour was then added. Only a few minutes after putting the stones in, the porridge would boil (the Ohlone did not have clay pots).
The acorns harvested in autumn (October) were then spread on the ground to be dried by exposure to the sun: they were then stored in a sort of granary which was a large basket on stilts set up outside the huts (as is still seen in Black Africa). They also made a delicious 'rich and oily' acorn bread, which was a favourite food on feast days. Oak acorns are an ideal resource in California. Unlike wheat, corn, barley or rice, acorns do not require tillage, irrigation or any other form of agricultural labour, and although the preparation of acorn flour is time-consuming and labour-intensive, the total labour is probably less than with a grain crop. Finally, the nutritional value of acorns, which is very high, is quite comparable to that of cereals.
The exceptional value of oak acorns helps to explain why the Ohlone and other central California Indians never adopted the agricultural practices of other