Food Forests

Some of you may have heard the phrase “Food Forest” thrown around the internet a lot lately. It sounds exciting but what does it mean? Let’s explore the concept of a food forest this week.

What is a food forest?

A food forest is a diverse agricultural system that mimics the structure and function of a natural forest to produce food, fiber, fuel, fodder, and medicine in abundance.

History

Food forests have been an agricultural practice in many cultures all over the world for thousands of years. Contrary to popular belief, native peoples traditionally managed forests, they didn’t neglect them in the spirit of modern conservation.

In the books Edible Forest Gardens Dave Jacke explores how native Americans in the Midwest United States used to actively manage and burn forests in cycles to produce food. This is not what we typically imagine when we see mainstream depictions of native American cultures!

Food forests have existed in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East.

Some of the oldest ones we know of that still exist today are a 2,000 year old food forest that is still managed today, and an 800 year old food forest in Vietnam that has been cultivated by the same family for 28 generations!

Layers of a Food Forest

Just like most existing forests, food forests contain many layers of vegetation. This allows for necessary insects, animals, birds, and microbial life to thrive.

• Canopy: The Canopy layer is comprised of mature taller trees. This acts as a place for birds and insects to roost, and also creates the first layer of temperature buffering.

• Understory: The Understory is where smaller shade-tolerant trees reside. Many of these add a secondary layer of insulation to the forest, as well as additional diversity.

• Shrub: The Shrub layer is the next layer of insulation that provides a wider variety of food crops.

• Herbaceous: The Herbaceous layer is composed of herb-type plants and vegetables. These will be much shorter-lived but will act as an energy and biomass source for the food forest.

• Groundcover: This is the last insulation layer in the food forest, and mostly protects water and nutrients from leaving the soil.

• Vertical: The Vertical layer (also called the climbing layer) is mostly vining plants that crawl along other plants. This adds an extra support system to beneficial insects and pollinators and increases the complexity of the food forest.

• Root: The Root layer acts as the soil management layer. Roots pull nutrients up from the lower levels of the soil and bring them to the surface when they die. Many roots are edible and also allow for keeping soil loose rather than compacted. Roots can also fight erosion.

• Fungal: The fungal layer is often overlooked, but a healthy forest system has a thriving fungal network. Fungi break down organic matter into soil to help build fertility over time.

You may notice similarities between layers. This is because many roles can be filled by one type of plant (for example, ginger in a tropical food forest could act as a root layer and an herbaceous layer since it has large top growth).

Also remember that the outputs from each layer can be customized to your local needs and microclimate! While someone may choose to have taller nut trees for a canopy layer, you may choose to have them be fruit trees that provide lumber later in their lifecycle.

Main Principles

• The Resilience Principle: Diversity in a food system leads to resilience. Take an industrial acre of corn for example; if the corn has a bad year then there is very little yield. If a bad year happens in a food forest where you have 10+ crops, you will likely still get a very good yield overall even if one or two things don’t do well!

• The Ease of Care Principle: Food forests are designed to become more low-maintenance over time. This doesn’t mean there’s no work involved, it simply means that the maintenance will be less and less over the years when designed properly.

• The Productivity Principle: Also consider that food forests are more productive over their lifetime than a traditional corn field. They may not necessarily produce the same amount of food pound for pound (although they may) but they are producing food, fiber, fuel, fodder medicine, and habitat, offering resilience, and are healthier than a traditional field. Overall, this is more productive than a single output acre.

• The Biomimicry Principle: Food forests mimic their natural counterparts. This means that you can apply the same principles to many regions around the world. On that note, it may be that a stereotypical food forest (as described in the newsletter) might not be the best style of food system for your area!

How do I design a food forest?

The first step in designing is to observe. You need to know what your soil grows best, where the water flows, where the sunlight falls, what temperature pockets you might have on your site, and what wildlife is supposed to exist in the area.

One thing to note is that just because you are mimicking the principles of a natural forest that does not mean you have to make it look like a natural forest. Go ahead and landscape it! Make it beautiful. There is no reason you can’t place things with a design in mind!

The 12 Permaculture Principles are a great place to start with understanding how to design properly. If you would like to see a newsletter on the 12 Permaculture Principles, let me know by responding to this newsletter!

Source your plants based on what you eat, what does well in your climate, and from reputable sources. I have already written about my top favorite suppliers here 

Remember that generally you will have to work harder for the first several years of your food forest and over time the maintenance will lower. The goal is to create a food system that will feed generations to come.

And finally a short update on my personal life for you guys who have asked:

Many of you know me. I’m a 27 year old guy from Michigan who enjoys the outdoors and everything relating to plants and food systems. I enjoy teaching others about foraging and obscure plants that I think are cool!

Right now I’m able to focus on writing this newsletter and some personal projects including an urban farm me and a few others run in Zeeland, MI. We would love for that to be my main source of income eventually. Our goals with the farm are to popularize regenerative food and eating so much that people can barely avoid it. We would like even a small plot of land to farm on, and to expand to products other than vegetables (kombuchas, tea, bread, fruit, honey, meat, dairy etc) We want to be the trend-setters for real healthy living in the area and to inspire people!

We are currently facing some challenges in the county that prevent us from doing what we want. I’m torn because on the one-hand, leaving the county is an easy solution, but on the other, that wouldn’t do much good for the people in the county either. So as you think of us, pray and hope that we can change things. We have a few ideas up our sleeves, but we’ll wait to say more until we’re ready.

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