Edible jungles are found throughout the world, from Vietnam to Borneo to Hawaii to the Yucatan. These common food forests are some of the most sustainable and regenerative forms of farming practiced throughout history. We covered some of these in the agroforestry section of the course, but we’ll mention the commons aspect here.
In many tropical cultures, fruit and nut trees and other food sources were planted in the jungle. Europeans in the Americas, for instance, thought it was all wild, uncultivated jungle, but in fact tribes knew exactly where all the food sources were and had already planted a new source well before the older source died off and had back up sources in case of failure of their primary sources. This model is the foundation of the food forest concept in permaculture.
But how many of us have created a food forest in the commons?
In Davis, California, they did just that. Village Homes is a planned suburban development that looks like many other suburbs but includes common areas weaving throughout the community with walking and biking paths lined with fruit and nut trees, swales, and other nutrient and water catchment techniques. This was built more than 40 years ago and the food forests are still thriving with mature fruit trees producing copious fruit for decades now -- a testament to the effectiveness of the design.
A stroll through the common areas could yield plums, jujube, grapes, apples, figs, or pomegranate, plus a variety of herbs and perennial vegetables.
Food forest in the commons, Village Homes.
Similar projects built in common areas include food forests on campuses like Florida Gulf Coast University food forest in Ft Myers, Florida, or Beacon Food Forest on public lands in Seattle, Washington.
Planting a food forest at Brown Mills, Atlanta, GA.
Perhaps the largest public food forest in the country is in the neighborhood of Brown Mill, in Atlanta, Georgia. It consists of 7 acres of city owned property. The intention at Brown Mills and other public food growing projects in Atlanta is to reduce food deserts and provide healthy, fresh produce to residents for free.
Newly planted Atlanta food forest.
Atlanta food forest harvest guidelines.
One of the main challenges to creating a public food forest is the question of who is going to care for it? These projects are more likely to be approved -- and successful -- if an established non-profit or dedicated individual with organizational skills takes on the maintenance and management tasks of the forest.
There are questions of watering, pruning, harvesting and other maintenance aspects. These projects often start small, which gives the organization or individuals time to prove that they are dependable, at which point cities or counties or private organizations like churches or businesses are more likely to agree to giving up the land.
For a food forest, it’s key to ensure land access agreements are very clear and written down in a contract or lease agreement. We’ve unfortunately seen more than one project get mowed down and destroyed because of insufficient or unclear understandings regarding land access, or who is responsible for what. This is where the “invisible structure” becomes vital for the survival of community projects.
Where commons have been most successful, agreements and understandings of how to care for them and individual responsibilities for doing so are very clear, and there are channels to ensure they are kept. We’ll cover the topic of agreements later in this chapter.
Creating a public project that needs to be maintained to a certain appearance standard needs a strong invisible structure in place to support it. The main reason we’ve found that these projects fail or don’t get off the ground is because of some missing aspect of that structure.
Part of that includes funding. Maintenance for the Village Homes project is covered by HOA fees. Gulf Coast University has specific funds set aside through an environmental program that are ongoing and cover any related costs.
Food forests that don’t have a dependable source of funding can fail. One model that is underutilized is funding such a project through sales of the food, giving classes that people pay for (with free classes and scholarships offered as well), having events in the space and otherwise monetizing the project. It should be possible to monetize the maintenance costs while still providing abundant free food to the community.