Permaculture
Bitternut Hickory: The Oil Tree
It’s time to abandon Canola oil mono-crops for perennial abundance.
Anyone interested in sustainable food systems will shudder to read this brag from the U.S. Canola Association.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service estimated about 2 million planted acres of canola in 2018 with record production of around 3,600 pounds per acre and record national average yield of nearly 1,900 pounds. This accounted for more than 7.2 billion pounds of canola production. — U.S. Canola Association
2 million acres of GMO mono-crops. They even have an initiative to sell us all on how rapeseed (the name of the plant used to produce canola oil) is great for bees. I’ll skip the tirade about that.
Enter the Bitternut Hickory
The nut meat of the bitternut hickory, you may be shocked to hear, is incredibly bitter and generally considered inedible. However, like some other nuts, acorns for example, the bitter tannins are water-soluble. This means that the oil extracted from the nut contains none of the bitterness.
