Building Community Food Forests

[James Samuel]

Start a food forest with a coffee and a croissant. For only $8 you could help build the foundation of Auckland's first Community Food Forest on public land.

'Food Forest Andy' has the skills and know how to establish a high yield forests to provide fresh, nutritious food for generations to come. So with your contribution of as little as $8 (or as much as you can afford) we can get Andy up to Auckland to get the party started.

Simply click here and make your Pledge today, for a much more abundant tomorrow.

Because not only will we be building a Food Forest on Waiheke Island, the project will add to the already substantial repository of knowledge in the open-source How-To Manual for creating a Community Food Forest on Public land.

Why is this important?

Turning soil for annual crops is labour, water and energy intensive and on a large scale has been responsible for significant losses of valuable, life-giving soil, which has blown away or been washed into the sea. I wont go into poisoning.

In addition to the soil loss, the amount of energy required is often quoted as being 10 calories of fossil fuels for 1 calorie of food. While the per acre outputs may be high through this type of system, the cost is prohibitive and unsustainable, and it fails miserably compared to the efficiencies possible when you cooperate with nature, rather than try to dominate her.

Forest Gardens

This might sound like a new concept, but it has ancient roots. There are well documented Food forests that have been developed over hundreds of years, and in the last few decades the concept has been promoted and evolved through the permaculture movement, and the likes of Geoff Lawton and others.

The basic concept is very simple, and is based on the understanding that a forest eco-system is a stable system that requires no human or energy inputs apart from sun and rain. A food forest or forest garden mimics this and simply utilises plant species which can grow in harmony with one another to create a system that produces food at every level of the forest. 

We're talking about a system of perennial plants that grow food while growing soil and which is resilient to extremes of weather, as it protects the land from the direct impacts of sun, wind and rain.

Together we can take one step closer to creating secure community managed food systems, so this basic human need can be met with grace and with style.

More

You can view Andy Cambeis' work with the  Hawea Flat food forest on Facebook, or read the "Manual for creating a Community Food Forest on Public Land", which is a beautiful summary document backed up by every detail you could possibly need.

For another Auckland example of a food forest, you can read about the Hortecology project on the Unitech campus.

If you want to know more about James Samuel, here is a recent article on resilience.org

[James Samuel]

Interesting that the Building Community Resilience Report (based on lessons from Christchurch) came out today. It's conclusion predictably states: 

...that communities are well placed to facilitate disaster recovery and to develop collective resilience to future crises. The case studies illustrate that connected communities, with strong pre-existing community infrastructure, found it easier to initiate local responses, to foster community involvement, and to access timely external support.