Earth is Our Home: Bioregional Permaculture, A New Model for Economic Prosperity 

What are Community Food Forests?

Producing more of our food with tree-based agriculture will nourish and heal more people and more land

in a shorter amount of time and with longer-term benefits than we have been able to achieve with conventional

agriculture over the past 150+ years.

Community Food Forests combine and reinvent ancient practices of Agroforestry and Agroecology to produce food in ways that regenerate human and ecological health. It is estimated that at one time Earth supported as many as 6 trillion trees, and that number has been reduced by roughly half since “modern” human civilization emerged over 10,000 years ago and converted land for agriculture and urbanization. At an estimated net loss averaging 10 billion trees per year due to ongoing deforestation, we are on track to further reduce that number by half, leaving just 1.5 trillion trees, or one quarter of the natural living forests that evolved as the lungs of this living Earth. (Source: Crowther et al, Nature, 2015)

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This deforestation not only: Greatly reduces the biodiversity of plant and animal species. Contributes excessive carbon to the atmosphere. Degrades the quality and viability of the biosphere to support human and other life. Reduces the quantity and quality of the surface and groundwater we all depend on. Results in land use patterns of agriculture and urbanization that contribute to the vicious cycle of excessive energy consumption and carbon emissions. 

 

Deforestation also:

Eliminates the evapotranspiration that drives many small water cycles across the globe that act as Earth’s water pumps to regulate climate and create conditions for life. We know we are leaving our children a hotter, drier planet that is less fit for human life.

We point to our excessive carbon emissions as the major cause of this climate change. Yet we ignore a larger underlying factor — our chronic, worldwide conversion of trees and forests to agriculture, urbanization, and other extractive uses that disrupt hydrologic cycles and destabilize Earth’s climate.

No wonder the climate of our living planet is out of balance!

We can do better than turning our Earth into an agricultural and industrial wasteland.

Human beings are not simple-minded consumers in the grocery store – we are complex, brilliant omnivores and creators.

We are integral to Earth’s ecosystems and food webs, and we still have the honor to serve as gardeners here among the

cycle of life!! We have no choice but to do better! We must return to our ancestral ways and reinvent them for our times.

The path forward is clear. We can grow most of our food WITH AND AMONG the living trees, forests, soils, and waters that define our biosphere— the thin veil of our planet that supports life.

Staying on our current path by continuing to grow our food AT THE EXCLUSION OF those trees and forests will only mean we humans are making ourselves less fit for life here on planet Earth.

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Earth IS the Garden of Eden.

We cannot afford to keep denying that reality. Humans CAN create low-energy, high-yield agriculture by mimicking forest ecosystems. The wisdom of our ancestors is timeless and true — food forests fed them; they can feed us and our children.