Tropical Staple Trees
Bananas, breadfruit, coconut, avocado, dates. Staple food that grows on a tree you plant once and harvest for fifty years, on ground you never plough.
The effect arrives across lifetimes. This is a gift to people you will not meet.
Origins
Nearly everything we eat comes from a plant that dies every year, and this is such an odd arrangement that it takes an effort to notice it.
Wheat, rice, maize, soy: annuals. You plough the ground, sow the seed, watch it grow, harvest it, and then the plant is dead and next spring you plough again. Every year you break the soil open, every year you start from nothing, and every year the soil erodes a little more. The entire architecture of industrial agriculture rests on this, and it was not a decision so much as an accident of which plants happened to be domesticable in the Fertile Crescent ten thousand years ago.
But there are places where the staple grew on a tree, and they have been quietly demonstrating an alternative the whole time.
The Pacific islands ate breadfruit — a tree that yields for decades, produces enormous quantities of starch, and requires almost nothing. Captain Bligh’s Bounty was on a mission to transport breadfruit to the Caribbean as cheap food for enslaved people, which is a bleak origin for a good tree. The oases of North Africa and the Middle East were built on the date palm. Much of the humid tropics ran on banana, plantain, coconut and jackfruit.
These are staple crops. They feed people at scale. And they do it from a permanent tree, on unploughed ground, storing carbon the entire time.
What it actually is
A tropical staple tree is a plant that produces a significant, storable, calorie-dense food and that lives for decades.
The list is longer than most people think: banana and plantain, breadfruit, coconut, date palm, avocado, jackfruit, peach palm, mango, and a good many others. Between them they feed a very large number of people, and almost none of them appear in a conversation about global food security, which is dominated by the annual grains.
The advantages compound.
No annual tillage. The ground is never broken, so it does not erode, and its structure and biology stay intact. This is the single largest difference between perennial and annual agriculture.
Carbon in the wood. A mature orchard stores carbon in trunks, branches and roots, at densities far above any annual crop — and continues doing so while producing food.
Deep roots. Perennial trees reach water and nutrients that annual crops cannot, which makes them dramatically more resilient in a drought. In a bad year the maize fails and the breadfruit tree is still standing.
And they stack. Tropical staple trees are the canopy of the multistrata systems described elsewhere on this site. The coconut is the top layer; the coffee grows beneath it; the ginger grows beneath that.
The honest limits: they are tropical, so this is not a temperate solution. Many of the fruits are perishable and hard to store, which matters enormously for food security. And a tree takes years before it yields, which is a real barrier for a family that needs to eat this year.
The numbers
The carbon. Tropical staple tree systems store carbon at levels approaching agroforestry and far above annual cropping, while producing staple calories — which is the rare combination that makes them interesting.
The yield. Breadfruit is the striking example: a single mature tree can produce a very large quantity of starchy fruit annually, for decades, with minimal input. In calorie terms per unit of labour and land, some of these systems are extraordinarily efficient.
The resilience. Deep-rooted perennials survive droughts that destroy annual crops. In a climate where droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe, this is not a marginal advantage; it is the difference between a hungry season and a famine.
The land. These systems belong on land already in agriculture or already degraded. Clearing forest to plant an avocado orchard is a net loss, and avocado in particular has driven real deforestation and real water conflict in Michoacán and elsewhere. The crop is not innocent because it is a tree.
The barrier. Years to first yield. A family that needs to eat this season cannot plant a tree that fruits in five.
Why it matters
There is a proverb, variously attributed, that a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in.
The tropical staple tree is the literal version of that. The mango your grandmother planted is feeding you. The coconut palm your grandfather put in is still yielding, sixty years on, and it will still be yielding when your children are grown. You did not plant it. You are simply eating from it, as she intended, without ever having been told.
This is a completely different relationship with food than the one most of the world now has. The annual crop is a transaction: you put in the seed, you take out the grain, and the arrangement is settled within a year. A staple tree is an inheritance. It is planted by one generation, tended by the next, and eaten from by a third, and everybody in that chain understands perfectly well what they are doing.
We have built a global food system out of plants that die every year, on soil we break open every spring, and we have been surprised to discover that the soil is going. There were always other ways to do it. They are still being practised, by people whose grandparents planted the trees they are standing under, and who did not need a climate rationale to know it was a good idea.
Plant a tree that will feed somebody. You will not meet them. That is the point.
What it actually takes
The years before the first harvest. This is the barrier, and it is the same one that constrains every tree solution. A smallholder who needs to eat this year cannot wait five for a tree, and intercropping annuals between young trees is the practical answer — food this season, food for fifty years.
Land tenure, again. Nobody plants a fifty-year tree on land they may lose. This recurs in nearly every solution on this site and it is the most consistently underrated constraint in the entire field.
Storage and processing, which is where these crops fail. Grain stores for years. Breadfruit rots in days. This single fact is why the annual grains conquered global agriculture and the tree staples did not, and it is a solvable problem — drying, flour, fermentation, processing — that receives a fraction of the research funding that maize does.
Not clearing forest to plant them. Avocado has driven deforestation and water conflict in Mexico. A tree crop grown on cleared forest is a net loss, and the fact that it is a tree does not launder it.
Breeding, and the lack of it. Billions have gone into improving wheat, rice and maize. Breadfruit has received almost nothing. There is enormous unrealised potential sitting in crops nobody has bothered to develop.
Where it matters most
The Pacific islands are the ancestral home of breadfruit and among the most food-insecure places on Earth, dependent on imported processed food while a tree that could feed them grows in the garden. There is a serious revival underway.
The Caribbean and Mesoamerica have the deepest tradition of tree-based staple production and the greatest exposure to hurricanes, which is precisely when a deep-rooted tree beats an annual field.
West Africa and the East African highlands already run substantially on plantain, banana and enset — the Ethiopian “false banana” that feeds many millions and is almost unknown outside the region, and which may be one of the most climate-resilient staple crops in existence.
The Western Ghats and Southeast Asia are where coconut, jackfruit and banana are already the canopy of multistrata home gardens.
North Africa and the Middle East, where the date palm made oasis civilisation possible and still does.
How to tell it’s being done well
Was it forest? A tree crop planted on cleared forest is a net loss. Being a tree does not make it restoration.
Can the farmer eat before the tree fruits? Intercropping annuals between young trees is the difference between a system that gets established and one that gets abandoned in year two.
Is there a way to store or process the harvest? This is where tree staples fail. A crop that rots in a week is not a food security crop unless somebody has solved the processing.
Does the farmer hold the land? Nobody plants a fifty-year tree on ground they might lose in ten.
What you can do
Anyone
- Learn about enset, the Ethiopian false banana that feeds millions and is almost unknown elsewhere. There are staple crops the world has simply never bothered to look at.
- Avocado is a tree crop and it has driven deforestation and water conflict. Being a tree does not make a crop innocent.
Farmers
- Intercrop annuals between young trees. It is what makes the transition survivable.
- A perennial staple survives the drought that kills your maize. In a worsening climate that is not a marginal benefit, it is insurance.
Policymakers and funders
- Fund breeding and processing for tree staples. Billions have gone into wheat, rice and maize; breadfruit and enset have received almost nothing, and the unrealised potential is enormous.
- Storage and processing is where these crops fail. Solve that and the rest follows.
- Land tenure, again. Nobody plants a fifty-year tree on land they may lose.
Business and investors
- Tree staple processing, drying and flour production is an underdeveloped value chain with clear food security and climate returns.
- Verify land provenance. Tree crops have driven real deforestation and the reputational exposure is growing.
Who is working on this
We are researching which organizations in our directory of 8,493 actively work on this solution, and we only list an organization once we have verified it. That research is ongoing. In the meantime, search the directory yourself:
Questions
What are tropical staple trees?
Trees producing significant, calorie-dense staple food that live for decades: banana and plantain, breadfruit, coconut, date palm, avocado, jackfruit, peach palm and others. They feed a very large number of people and are almost entirely absent from global food security conversations, which are dominated by annual grains.
Why does it matter that they are perennial?
Because the ground is never ploughed. Annual crops require breaking the soil open every year, which is the source of most agricultural erosion and a large share of its emissions. A tree crop stores carbon in wood while producing food, and its deep roots reach water that annual crops cannot, making it dramatically more drought-resilient.
Can tree crops really feed people at scale?
They already do. Much of the humid tropics runs on banana, plantain, coconut and jackfruit. Ethiopia's enset, the false banana, feeds many millions and is almost unknown outside the region. The Pacific islands were built on breadfruit. These are not novelties; they are staples that the global food system happens to ignore.
Why did the annual grains win?
Storage. Grain keeps for years; breadfruit rots in days. That single fact is why wheat, rice and maize conquered global agriculture and tree staples did not. It is a solvable problem, through drying, flour and processing, and it receives a small fraction of the research funding that maize does.
What is the main barrier?
Years to first yield. A family that needs to eat this season cannot wait five years for a tree. Intercropping annual crops between young trees is the practical answer: food this season and food for fifty years. And, as with every tree solution, land tenure: nobody plants a fifty-year tree on ground they might lose.
Are tree crops automatically good for the environment?
No. Avocado has driven deforestation and serious water conflict in Mexico. A tree crop grown on cleared forest is a net loss, and being a tree does not launder it. These systems belong on land already farmed or already degraded.
Sources
- Project Drawdown - Tropical Staple Trees Framework and classification. Cited, not reproduced.
- FAO - Neglected and underutilised crop species
- Breadfruit Institute, National Tropical Botanical Garden
- Borrell et al. (2020), Environmental Research Letters - Enset in Ethiopia as a climate-resilient staple
- World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)
The solution taxonomy follows the framework popularised by Project Drawdown. The analysis above is our own; for their carbon modeling and rankings, visit them directly.