what is a food forest well we're all
quite familiar with forests and forests
as an ecosystem with great diversity of
plants animals and fungi or harmonizing
together and inter reacting in many many
niches and layers designed by nature
maintained as a system in perfect
balance we'll imagine that as a system
that produces food the majority of the
elements in that system being productive
that's a food forest
so by understanding how nature designs
forests systems so they're self
maintaining self-replicating we can
model that system with productive
species so that we can produce food in
the most sustainable way with the
minimal amount of input for the maximum
amount of output anywhere in the world
that's a food forest system that we can
actually design and work with in long
term and permanent situations
[Music]
all forests have layers so you start off
with a canopy layer that's the top of
the forest then you have understory
layers and under those who have bush and
shrub layers going down to herbaceous
layers which are non woody plants and
then you have a root yield you have
plants that actually have large starchy
roots and then on the ground you have
grande covers and you also have a
vertical layer of climbers now all
forests have those layers in the tropics
you can have emergent palms and
understory palms and you can have slight
variations in different climates but you
have a basic set of layers that occupy
all the space when we design a food
forest we put that layering system into
action to our benefit for production and
maintenance through function here in the
subtropics you have tamarillo as an
understory and you have taro and coco
yam and cassava as a root yield that
changes from climate to climate then you
have understory productive trees like
feijoa
guava and citrus and large herbs like
bananas and then you have support
species like the ice cream bean and the
tip Juana Tipu and kazarina they're
large trees but they continue to support
the forest by cycling nutrient you also
have understory nitrogen fixers like the
acacia x' and the lukina and the cassia
and our busier species they're all
really good fast functioning fast carbon
pathways that fix nitrogen and can be
chopped to the ground for mulch as the
space that they're occupying can be
taken up by the productive species here
we have rose apples mulberry we have
large legume trees and we have large
fruit trees to have jackfruit the larger
fruit in the world we have Bunya pine a
very large nut but we also have pecan
which is a nut tree here that's also
deciduous loses its leaves in winter
then we have your classic mango as a
large overstory tree these are all space
occupiers in a system that's incredibly
stable when all the layers are
completely occupying
[Music]
we can plant food for us by planning
support species at the same time as the
fruit trees and managing the support
species to shelter and boost the
productive species or we can just plant
the pioneer support species until we get
a stable canopy but we don't want to go
the other way around we don't want to
start with a proactive species and work
hard with lots of inputs to keep them in
a healthy state the support species do
the work for us
it can be up to 95 percent of the mass
in the early years are the leg injuries
and the mulch producing trees that
produce the biomass we prune these and
these trees shed nitrogen to the soil
because they have relationships there
classic pioneers and most are nitrogen
fixing species in other words they have
Rhizobium bacterial partners in the soil
that take nitrogen from the air in the
soil and bring it into their plant
bodies and they then eventually die and
that nitrogen it's added to the soil now
we can speed that process up we can
sacrifice those species with good timing
after we've put them into relative
placement so over time the species we
sacrifice open up opportunities for our
productive species they shelter and
support and provide the fertilizer the
soil conditioning and the houmous so we
stack the system in space but we prune
in relation to time so we wait for the
time of year when there is more rainfall
than evaporation after the period where
it's been dry and the evaporation is
higher than rainfall there we need shade
and we leave the shade up but as soon as
the rainfall gets heavier and higher
than the evaporation we can start to cut
and open up light avenues and space for
our productive species to take up the
gap
now over time when we get to
establishment we've got less and less
mass in pioneer support species and more
and more mass in a productive species
and we end up with a reversal of mass we
have 95 percent productive only 5% in
support so we don't just stack in space
we stack in time and we speed up the
process
[Music]
these leg um support trees that have
been cut off as Pollard's may look a bit
harsh but they very quickly start to
regrow you can see here little shoots
coming everywhere and they're all the
same with the regrowth we get a
beautiful shade now that's handy in the
hot tummy year when we've got a lot of
evaporation over rainfall and it's
actually a nurse crop for your fruit
trees when they're young later on we may
cut them more regularly and keep feeding
the salt and eventually we may cut them
out a lower cut they'll shoot a few more
times we'll keep adding that mulch and
eventually we'll cut them at ground
level and not allow them to grow leaves
so they actually die out it's our choice
we're actually manipulating their forest
so that it grows in our favor towards
productive species we change the way it
grows in our favor
so here you see the pollard regrowth and
in just a few months in the subtropics
you can gain all this wood now it might
be once a year a temperate climate once
once every six months every three months
in the tropics you're working with the
cycles of the forest within climate so
you're feeding the soil with a fallen
forest and you're designing the way the
forest Falls we can use animals to help
us establish food for us we can graze
with larger animals then they have to be
out of the way because we're put into
small plans we can put in poultry
chickens and ducks and they can prepare
the ground and then later on when the
trees are up we can bring in maintenance
cycles of chickens and ducks to speed
the system up and that way we can use
our animals to gain an advantage while
they're productive for us at the same
time
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I'm sitting in a food forest that's been
recovered by ducks this section here was
well at a maintenance ad quite a lot of
long clumping grasses and unwanted
plants we call weeds we've put a fence
around it a temporary fence electric
fence but we haven't even electrified it
we put in a hundred or so muscovy ducks
in just over three weeks they've totally
changed the area they've eaten most of
the green material they've flattened out
the grasses they've manured the ground
lived condition the soil and it's ready
for replanting with the support species
and Inter plants and fruit trees where
there's gaps taking this time advantage
this process of dynamic event we can now
jump in and put in a whole assembly of
plants that will bring it to a diverse
interactive stability and possibly go
right through the maintenance without
ever needing this event to happen again
this is taking time advantage from an
animal interaction to a replant which we
can do anytime we slip up on our
maintenance
just three weeks ago the Ducks were here
now it's recovered we've planted in the
support species in extra fruit trees
we've established extra ground covers
and we've got a little footpath
surrounded by wood prunings branch
cronies going right the way through on
contour it's on its way and it's
probably going into a permanent stable
system from here on in
[Music]
food fires function has a living
ecosystem and they are so diverse and so
stable and there is nothing like this in
modern agriculture
nothing is diverse nothing is stable
nothing has fertile the production of
soil is constant the fertility is
constantly increasing the diversity of
production is non-stop so with a food
forest system you have a system that
self replicates over time there are no
systems that produce as much per square
meter for the smallest amount of inputs
this is a system that is proven even in
urban agriculture many people have heard
my quote you can solve all the world's
problems in a garden but what a lot of
people don't know about that quote is
I'm referring to food forests they will
work anywhere and these systems give us
permanent security worldwide we just
need people to realize that if we all
move in this same direction we can solve
all the world's problems in our food
forest gardens and supply all our needs
without causing any damage whatsoever
we humanity can be the most beneficial
element on this planet
[Music]