Forestry and Food- Connecting the Dots

Last night, my local permaculture potluck club met for an evening of delicious food and fun conversation. The topic that surfaced most often was centered around Kirsten's recent post on using our forest as a guide for creating guilds. Everyone was pretty excited about it, and I think it gave a lot of the members of our group the hope that doing permaculture on their land was very much within reach. So if you haven't read it yet, do it before you read on!

Oak-hickory forest

We started talking about underplantings for trees like oak and hickory, but then I suggested replacing those trees with more useful ones for food, like pecan and chestnut, which Kirsten noted, in her post, were closely related. That caused a bit of a friendly shock. Was that really permaculture? Well, yeah....but I need to explain the context.

The food was very good, I was very stuffed and sleepy after a long day's work running errands and moving paddocks, so I was not able to clarify where I was coming from. Here goes my second try.

Forests are essential and most of our land should be covered by them. The late Professor Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, said, " If you destroy the forest then the river will stop flowing, the rains will become irregular, the crops will fail and you will die of hunger and starvation." Maathai saw this first hand as the forests that provided firewood and food for her people were lost to cash crops. The land quickly became arid, and as a womens' rights activist in her county she started this initiative to help those most affected by this desertification.

Wangari Maathai

Areas that were carefully reforested began to store water in their soils, creeks started flowing again and rainfall increased in these areas. Small horticulture and good husbandry practices replaced cash crops as a food source and local women were empowered. 

Peter Bane, in The Permaculture Handbook stresses the need to keep the upper elevations covered in forests. Water and nutrients are washed down from these places and are lost if they are not stored and used. Forests hold the land in place, store water in their soils, and regulate the moisture lost to evaporation, thus preventing erosion, mudslides, slump and desertification, among other things. The moisture surrounding forests regulates climate and rainfall and carbon from the atmosphere is sequestered as biomass.

So we can easily see the connection between forests and our continued ability to grow food. But, as Kirsten noted, we are not all going to be able to subsist on many of our high tannin oaks or thick shelled hickories. However, chestnuts are related to oaks, and pecans are a kind of hickory. Both of these have significantly higher food content and are logical choices for our native climate and soil. The point is that these forests provide a pattern of relationship for how we can grow food, not necessarily all the species we will need. They are the foundation of guild creation, but the possibilities are virtually endless.

Another helpful tool in determining a healthy relationship between forests and food growing is the permaculture concept of zones. Zones are areas determined by the intensity of human involvement. Zone 1 is closest to the house and is the most intensely managed. Food is virtually packed into every space and layer. Zones further away from the house require fewer and fewer visits and are appropriately divided into areas for orchards, food forests, crops and livestock. Further out is the managed woodland and then human activity dissolves into untended forest. But these forests are what keep the more intensively and productive areas working. It's all connected in one climate and biosphere.

That said, oaks and hickories are still useful trees in any landscape. They help to hold soil in place and can provide welcome afternoon shade, among other things. This information is simply intended to look at the big picture that provides the context for individual permaculture strategies and to empower everyone to think about all the possible ways to reach their own permaculture visions.