Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren boglebam here. Eleven point eight percent of American households, that's about forty million people experienced food insecurity, which is the lack of financial resources to buy sufficient food at least some of the time in seventeen according to the United States Department of Agriculture. One way of fighting this
could be community food forests. Food forests are a far cry from community gardens, as they're not rows and rows of standard plant beds. Instead, they're designed to mimic natural forests using food bearing trees, roots, greens, vines, and other plants while making the most of the space available. As a result, food forests are picturesque and calming gathering areas for community members looking to enjoy a piece of nature
while picking whatever produce they need for free. We spoke with Gezeppe Telarrico, and agronomists specializing in permaculture, food security, and environmental management systems, who is also the founder and manager of the World a Culture Association. He said the concept behind food forests is that natural forests are highly productive in their own right and totally self sustainable over
extremely long time frames. So by following the functional patterns that exist in a natural forest and adapting them to the conditions of light and space that each species need in order to be productive, we can create very low maintenance production zones that are essentially harvest systems. By mimicking natural patterns in nature as much as possible, the hope is that every species needs humans, animals, and plants will be met in a sustainable way, although there's some wiggle
room for layout based on the local environment. A typical food forest is designed with a canopy of large nut and fruit trees, followed by a lower tree layer of dwarf fruit trees. Next is a shrub layer composed of shrubs that produce berries, followed by a layer of herbs, and then by root crops such as potatoes and carrots. The soil surface is planted with groundcover specific crops, and finally, a layer of vertical climbers and vines like gray Sir
Kiwi's is incorporated. Most of these spaces aren't even all that huge. In fact, when it opens, Atlanta's urban food Forest at Brown's Mill will be the city's first and the largest in the US at seven point one acres. That's about two point eight hectors. Even better, food forests are often planned to make use of previously wasted space.
The Doctor George Washington Carver Edible Park in Asheville, North Carolina took over an area once occupied by a trash heap, and the Glendale Community Garden in West Akron, Ohio was created on a vacant lot and all two common eyesore. In cities across the country, it's not unusual for community churches, schools, and governments to establish food forests of whatever size they can manage with the help of civic organizations and volunteers. But one food forest in a given city isn't going
to totally eradicate the issue of hunger. Of course, the Atlanta Urban Food Forest is one prong of a citywide effort to make healthy food accessible to pent of city residents by the year two. We spoke via email with Mike mccore, a forest ranger with Trees Atlanta. He said the area is a U s D, a classified food desert,
so benefiting the immediate neighborhood is the primary goal. A group of neighbors manages the community garden and herb area while Trees Atlanta and other partners manage the orchard and forested sections of the land. Although food forests are free and open to the public, they may ask visitors to only harvest food when forest managers are present, to prevent people from accidentally damaging the plants or taking produce that
isn't ready yet. The movement is now gaining steam, but food forests took a while to get off the ground. The Asheville Food Forest was the first of its kind in the modern United States, although Tellarrico notes that human agro ecology systems have been used for ages in many communities, such as those in Java, Bali, New Guinea, and parts
of Central and South America. A couple more popped up here and there after Asheville's launch in seven, but it wasn't until after Seattle's Beacon Hill Food Forest garnered much publicity in twelve that these projects really started to gain traction. As of eighteen, it there are more than seventy food forests established across the United States and thousands more around
the world. Today's episode was written by Elia Hoyt and produced by Tyler clang Breen Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works from one on this and lots of other eco friendly topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com, and for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,