Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

Discussion in 'General chat' started by Phuein, Nov 25, 2008.

  1. booklady

    booklady Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    It seems to me this is a fairly complex question with multiple aspects:
    • Can you meet all of your nutritional needs from a food forest?
      What size of food forest do you need to meet your nutritional needs?
      What composition of food forest do you need to meet your nutritional needs?
      What kind of products can you make from a food forest to sell or trade?
      What kind of lifestyle can you afford by living wholly off a food forest?

    If we look at any kind of agriculture/agronomy in the world today I would guess that you can only expect a subsistence lifestyle if you are living off the products of a plot of land and not engaging in other kinds of work outside of that. You'd be subject to the vagaries of nature - some years will be boom and some bust because all natural crops are subject to failure for various reasons, be it weather, disease, or infestations of one sort or another.

    I know this does not answer the original question, but perhaps the question needs some clarification. I do know of at least one farmer who uses permacultural principles to run her organic farm, but she also uses modern-day equipment to produce prepared foods for sale and she most likely has one or more family members who work outside the farm. All of the farmers I personally know, regardless of their methods of farming, are not solely dependent on farming for their lifestyle.
     
  2. Phuein

    Phuein Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    lol milifestyle, great facts list :+D Regarding the last two - use the genius of Fukuoka. Seed balls, and just scattering the straw randomly on the land.

    So far Permaculture Forest gardens seemingly would benefit mostly from being a main part of a community, for example 20 families or so, and being used and cultivated by all of them. Of course that means that each family's acre share makes a part of the entire system. More like nature would intend it to be I'd think :+D

    elmejor, can u show the report?

    booklady, I agree. Depends on your goal through asking it, it may be complex. But I would be happy to see any sort of relevant answer at all. I'm very flexible with this, and I'm sure others who want to see numbers and documentation feel similarly, seeing how little there is right now.
     
  3. christopher

    christopher Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Hi Phuein,

    I live in a food forest I have been building for 20 years. I have hundreds of species. I could eat exclusively from what I produce, though I still like wheat bread and the occasional noodles. I haven't figured out how to grow wheat her in tropical belize :lol:

    Foodforests, when well designed, provide a very large amount of calories through the year, making the calories expended to calories harvested ratio favourable to the small holder. If animal husbandry is a component of the over all design, with feed banks for ruminants or for pigs, and tree crops for chickens, then you can complex your system and create food webs, cycling nitrients back to the soil as manure. With a good mix of species, you get a good level of resiliency.

    We have a fairly complex agroforestry ststem, with timber, tree legumes, various fruit and nut species, medicinals, some marketable crops, which provides us wit WAY more calories than we can consume, so much that we donate food regularly to an elderly feeding program near us.

    https://www.mmrfbz.org/Food_security.html has some pictures of the agroforestry system. The picture of the food forest shows coconut, breadnut (artocarpus camansi), spondia dulcis, sugarcane, cacao, jippy japp palm, peach palm, cacao, banana, and hidden, but within view of that is cassava, cocoyam (like taro), spondia mombin, coffee canephora, c. raecamosa, c. caracolio and c. liberica.

    I live in what was an ancient Maya city, with ruins and house mounds and pottery shards, obsidian arrow heads and other artifacts frequently turn up when I turn the soil. There are 50 house sites on my land, terraces, temples and plazas, indicating a very high population density. It is my very firm belief that agroforestry enabled the Mya to achieve enough surplus to float all the things that made their civilization possible. Full time scribes, artists, astronomers, potters, masons, farmers, religious class, ruling class, standing armies, all existed here.

    The ancient Maya lacked steel machetes, or any metal working, lacked chainsaws, bic lighters, pick ups, horses (or any other beasts of burden), chainsaws, or the wheel. Modern Maya farmers work hard virtually every day, often around their corn. They have all those things above, chainsaws, horses, steel machetes, and they have hybrid seed, now, and round up and fertilizer, and they all manage to break even for life through hard work, careful planning and luck. There is no way the ancient Maya fueled their civilzation with maize.

    So, I suspect the ancient Maya did t with agroforestry, planting Brosimum allicastrum, mamea americana and other tree crops (including cacao). I know that Maya sites here in Belize off in the hsh have high densities of brossimum and ame near them, which are likely relic Maya cultigens.

    Anyway, PM me if you want specific information about food forests in Belize!

    Best wishes,

    Christopher
     
  4. booklady

    booklady Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Phuein, I don't have any numbers for food forest gardening. What I do have is a book which covers a similar topic, at least as it applies to urban living, and has all the facts and figures you could possibly want on it's specific approach. The book is called The Integral Urban House - self-reliant living in the city, by Helga and Bill Olkowski and the Farallones Institute. I don't know if anyone else here has seen this book, but it's rather curious. It outlines how to turn an urban house environment into a closed ecosystem with a nitrogen cycle and water cycle. The book is the result of a project set up in the 1970's in Berkeley California. They studied all kinds of things, including human nutritional requirements, how much space was needed to grow food to meet those requirements, how to make the most use of the garden space, when to harvest the animals, and how to manage pests and diseases. It's full of diagrams and charts with facts and figures. Basically it's described as showing "how to achieve a high quality urban way of life using a fraction of the resources we are accustomed to, at lower cost, with less pollution and ugliness." Given the amount of time and energy that went into the above book, I'm personally not terribly surprised that there are not similar facts and figures available for the results of food foresting. It took 4 years of research, a large number of people, and significant funding, to produce that book.

    Anyway, I hope you find some facts and figures for your permaculture quest.
     
  5. Phuein

    Phuein Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Hey Christopher. Thanks for all this educating information :+D ! I'm glad to meet a living proof here.
    Your kind of experience is exactly what motivates me to go in this direction. I can only hope to some day reach such results as well.

    booklady, with all do respect to books - if I don't have access to the said book, then it doesn't help. If the book holds information, numbers and evidence, that can be found online, then I would be very happy to read it :D Otherwise, talk about the book is the same as hearsay for this matter.
    Also, "self-reliant living in the city" is not what this thread is about. This thread questions only Forest Gardening, which is hardly possible in the city, or even in the suburbs unless you have a very very large property or an area you can use even if not yours - to actually be self sustaining food-wise.
     
  6. booklady

    booklady Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Well, good luck with your quest for data. When you said "community" I thought you were talking about a possibly suburban community. Data is always only as good as it's source. I hope you find sources you trust.
     
  7. Phuein

    Phuein Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Thanks. And I did. A suburban community, by definition, can manage a Forest Garden if they actually want to. I haven't seen such a transformation occur anywhere yet though myself. I wonder if there is such an example anywhere. I don't see it happening in any city considering how cities work with all their rules and the idea behind cities - based on massive production factories in the past, and today still a massive production design.

    Not that I don't think it is possible to fix anything up back to being green :+P
     
  8. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Here is an inspiring city-suburban garden in Perth WA
    [​IMG]
    (Check out the thread here in Permaculture Forums on Ice Cream Bean)
    https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2431753.htm

    Also check out this ABC-GS Fact Sheet: Vertical Garden
    https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2431709.htm
    I have seen a photo of a wall of strawberries growing as a partition in a city office.
    I wondered if there were any office fights on who gets to eat the strawberries? :)
    Many City high rise office buildings are now being built that are green friendly, with roof and other gardens.

    I would just like someone to invent a broad-spectrum indoor LE light that can just be pugged or screwed into a normal home light socket.
     
  9. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Yet another link/article
    [​IMG]

    https://westinstenv.org/histwl/2009/01/0 ... the-andes/

    I don't think there is much "Uncultivated Landscape" on this planet.
    That is landscape that was once NOT "farmed" by man.
    Aborigines in Australia have been tipping the balance toward better human food supply in Australia for 40-80,000 years.
    1491 shows the same thing was happening in the Americas.
    m
     
  10. Phuein

    Phuein Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    The first article is quite interesting :+D It looks like a good example of a functioning forest garden. It's a shame that there isn't any numeric data there though. Also, there isn't much evidence to it's use. The entire article was very general, and gave a sort of "well I got a so called forest garden, and its working" without too much explanation. How many people live off that garden if at all strictly? Why no pictures? I somehow suspect that I've seen a video of this before though... the "paint the tools red" part was familiar :D Anyhow it's lacking some important information - but it is positive as a sort of moral booster.

    The second article is complete rubbish for this thread's purpose. It was said before that without proper documentation of action and result of a forest garden, just claiming that "some people" did "something similar" and that it "worked for them" isn't of much use to a person who's looking for a clearly proven working Forest Garden, that he can now copy it's principles and exist off of.

    I do thank you for adding to the thread :+D It's always nice to learn new things. I just wish I could see more people who can actually say "Hey mate. I have a Forest Garden I made myself, and I can feed me and the family off of it throughout the year without buying any food with money." Heck, even add to it "And I manage to store enough water, and produce enough energy to live quite happily with a computer and an internet connection." :+D It's realistic.
     
  11. Geoff Lawton

    Geoff Lawton Administrator Staff Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Hi Guys
    the real point is here that food forests can be and often are permanent 30, 300, 2000 years old still in production still being lived from, with and creating and an on going economy, with no drop in soil quality, fertility and quantity in fact mostly increases. Monoculture orchards are not sustainable and do not last and are not forests in form or function there for their energy audits are very poor compared to food forest specially if the comparison is made over time.
     
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  12. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    I am a bit surprised by your response.
    It is a review of a book.
    William M. Denevan. 2001. Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes. Oxford University Press, 2001.
    https://westinstenv.org/histwl/2009/01/0 ... the-andes/

    Australian Aboriginals managed the forests of Australia for over 40,000 years with fire.
    It looks like they are going to get the job back again
    https://www.savanna.cdu.edu.au/informati ... oject.html
     
  13. Burra Maluca

    Burra Maluca Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    I should think that the sort of people who live off a food forest aren't the sort who record everything.

    I've always been of the opinion that if you want something doing, you have to do it yourself. Why don't you set up a food forest of your own, record everything for thirty years and then publish your results? I'm planting mine up at the moment, but I must admit I never thought about recording everything, and I would never be strict enough about not eating 'out' for any data to be really meaningful. I think maybe you are expecting too much of other people - just try it for yourself and see how it goes!
     
  14. Jen Mazer

    Jen Mazer Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Phuein,
    Hi.
    David Jacke wrote a two volume set "Edible Forest Gardens" which is meant for the northeastern US.
    He has a website by the same name. You can email him.
    Jen
     
  15. Phuein

    Phuein Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    Nevermind the chatter :+P I'm heading towards some volunteer work and hopefully a permacourse after that finally. I wonder if I'd bother documenting my own doings. I have no doubt that documenting such work has its benefits - for all people. Not doing so would simply be lazy. That doesn't mean you have to limit your behavior in any way either - you can eat out. There is plenty to record.

    I'm aware that humans, and many other animals, have survived by using forests... Meh, how do I envy those Chinese who live in the none-tropic jungles, and all other who are alike. I've always been a big forests fan. Just looking at trees gives the notion that a forest could grow just about anywhere where there is land and tolerable temperatures :+D Get a tree to root in a bit, and then it becomes one of the strongest creatures on Earth!

    I hope my course goes well. It wont have much Forest Gardening work in it probably.
     
  16. Noz

    Noz Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    I was asking the same question myself and found reading Toby Hemingway to be very enlightening. He points to forest gardening as the natural way that humans have lived in many continents. America, Amazon etc. Clearly, you can meet your need for various staples entirely from a woody forest system with understory - acorn, carob, coffee, beans climbing up trees etc. clearly where you are would change the species that you choose for the system.
    In practice, I doubt that I would choose the diet that comes solely from these systems because I do enjoy grains. But across the planet we need more trees for a number of reasons: 1. climate change 2. rainfall 3. water table balance (ie. salinity in Australia) 4. habitat 5. low intensity systems requiring fewer inputs (compare to a wheat field).
     
  17. jase777

    jase777 New Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    hey my name is jason
    I was just interested if you ever ended up following you dream with a food forest in israel ?
    if so please let me know im very interested
    thanks
    jase
     
  18. Fernando Pessoa

    Fernando Pessoa Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    I have seen a few of them established from 1st hand experience,I was at an emerging forest the other day.Although not completely productive possibly due to the season I can tell you these things about it.It was amazingly diverse,it was about 7 years old a mixture of timbers for cabinets sub tropical fruits rainforest fruits tubers coffee,sapote actually the list is endless.It was full of pollard Nitrogen fixing cassia tipu et all,yams abounded as did sweet potato and all the other assorted ground covers it had fungu birds bees bamboo dragonflies because it is beside a dam.The stacking was amazing it's nourished by a swale behindThe most amazing thing to me was when I pulled a n fixing legume to show a friend the nodules that the soil was hand tillable to at least 2 feet on either side of the pulled roots.It was a stable system having visited a number of times before I saw that minimal interference from humans apart from chop drop was going on.I went across the small road to the paddock next to it to hand till in the soil for comparison,I could barley break ground.I can only imagine how good the soil would be for growing other foods such as annual veg etc.It strikes me that even if the food forest is not the greatest yielder in the world its bio mass production and soil improvement capabilitys are second to none.As food forest science becomes more and more refined I think we will see huge increases in yield capacity.To me however anything that can do these four jobs food,soil,biomass,habitat all at the same time is a wonderful thing.It works and it works amazingly.Tagari farm is always abundant you can have a big feed anytime of the year..........beware of falling jackfruit:>)
    Happy Days to you all
    Fernando
     
  19. jmygann

    jmygann Junior Member

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    Re: Food Forest Gardening - Does it work?

    I followed this thread and could not find any "food forests" that is supplying anything over about 20% of the diet let alone 100 %

    Are there any viable food forests in the USA ? any new links (not books)... actual "food forests" producing over 20% of the diet ??
     
  20. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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