Since arriving on the evolutionary scene 100,000 years ago humans have been modifying the natural environments around them to produce more of the food and fibre they find desirable. Not so long ago, man was just one species in a forest full of predators, prickly and poisonous organisms and unreliable food supplies.
So to make things more agreeable, we built safe places to sleep, disposed thoughtfully of pips of selected fruit, organised clearings in the forest for light-loving plants and defecated in strategic locations and eventually even protected our newly tamed plants and animals.
Everything went well until a few thousand years ago when various civilisations oversimplified land use systems to the point where the combined power of all other species was not capable of balancing man's influence and permanent damage was done to the land resource.
Whilst spectacular damage was done in some of the countries around the Mediterranean, there were places where human designed forests emerged much more productive than native forests and much more stable than monocultural tree cropping or annual agriculture. The Cork-Pork forests of Portugal where pigs grew fat on the acorns which dropped from oaks cultivated for their cork bark survived as a system for a millennium.
Chinese pigs gorged themselves on mulberries and silkworms converted the leaves of the same tree into the World's most valuable thread. The forests were fertilised and weeded by the pigs.
Today, the same ground is used for growing annual crops, crops reliant on large inputs of fertiliser, sprays, fuels and machinery. But even with all these nonrenewable inputs, the system is losing overall fertility and some people are developing models for returning the ground to perennial systems; systems which are stable enough to promise the ecological sustainability which remains the ultimate precursor to our survival.
In the late Seventies, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren synthesised a set of design principles for the sustainable occupation of The Planet by humans known as Permaculture, the philosophy promises the production of high quality food without the use of significant quantities of non renewable resources or biocides.
A common use for land in Permaculture designs is as food forests and some of these latter day (and theoretically designed) forests are now a decade old and starting to yield their secrets. There are also surviving examples of traditional Mediterranean systems which are relevant to Australia but only a few thinkers, like David Holmgren, have made the connections to date.
David tells of a family who have occupied a 7ha farm in the Po Valley in Northern Italy for four generations. With essentially organic production techniques, the little property supports the 8 adults and assorted children who manage a polyculture including grapes, walnuts, wheat, soybeans, native forest, lucerne and livestock. They achieve yields comparable with their neighbours who require some 20ha of land per viable family unit and who consume vastly more non renewable resources per ha.
The Permaculture-inspired food forests have tended to have very large numbers of species, many times the number of species endemic to a particular area. This is in part a reaction to the staggeringly simplified current commercial farming systems (eg on the Adelaide Plains we have only one significant commercial tree crop, almonds; and yet there at least thirty fruit and nut species which we know will grow well)
It also reflects the freedom of Permaculture designers from cultural and scientific 'conventional wisdom'. This freedom, bravery or ignorance led us personally to jewels' such as pecans, sapotes, persimmons, cherry guavas, Tahitian limes, white mulberries and pistachio nuts.
However, it is clear that these 'botanic zoos' generally shake down to a much smaller number of species which are well adapted to the local environment, suit the people who are managing them and the equipment available and enjoy viable markets for their products (if the property has been set up to generate surpluses).
Many of the food foresters with moderate surpluses over their household needs undergo a bitter realisation that they can give the products away but it is so time consuming to sell small quantities of food for profit that they may as well not do it. Food co-operatives have helped to solve that problem for the more creative operators. Many people started with the idea of self reliance but found that they were very good at growing particular crops and have expanded production to the point of commercial viability. It is they and the people who designed their properties for substantial surpluses who can answer the question of whether such properties can be commercially viable.
Taking the property which my wife Annemarie and I run near Gawler in SA as an example one must emphasise the importance of planning development through time as well as spatial and species design. It was vital that we keep off-farm income rolling in while we capitalised and planted the property up.
It was important to grow chooks and annuals to provide cash flow early in the development of the place. It was necessary to qualify for primary producer status to obtain tax refunds to be spent on further development of the block. We needed to establish a nursery to cheaply propagate and hold trees. Both of us undertook training in permaculture design so we had a vague idea what we were doing.
Our site was 15 hectares of deep river silt of neutral pH with rainfall of 450mm so water use was a major preoccupation. We needed to choose some major species which had the potential to tap into a shallow aquifer, 15m down.
We came up with pistachios, carobs, nut pine and pecans as well as about 100 native species so it was time to look at the potential profitability of the key crops before deciding on a mix that would deliver ecological and economic viability. The gross margins (amount per hectare of income left after paying all the annual costs) for pistachios was $10,000 which looked the best. Pecans were next but I was worried about productivity and variety choice for the Adelaide Plains so carobs got the second berth with gross margins between $2,000 and $10,000. Nut pines presented major doubts in terms of processing and profitability. So we built an ecologically diverse design, including 160 fruit, nut and vegetable cultivars and 140 native species around the main crops.
These key species, pistachios, carobs and pecans, all had to be low input, deep rooted, moderately profitable and amenable to manual or mechanical harvesting.
In addition to income from those crops, there will be the superimposed gross margins of free range goose production, ecotourism, education and ultimately the sale of native animals to others establishing sanctuaries.
This 'multiple yield' phenomenon also occurs in the more intensively managed parts of the property where two or three vegetable crops are harvested from a given part of the market garden annually and chickens utilise the crop wastes. The garden around our house is superficially a 'cottage garden' but also provides herbs and edible flowers for sale. The house and vegetable areas can be regarded as clearings in a complex food forest.
The management of our crops is essentially organic, which can provide price premia of 30-100%, but which more importantly means that we do not have to pay for or apply any insecticides, we minimise the need for weed and orchard floor management operations by using grazing animals and we use a copper spray only once every two or three years to control fungi and lichens on fruit and nut trees. Our soil is deficient in copper so that input is doubly useful.
In the fruit and nut areas, our fertiliser is unprocessed deep litter manure from a local chicken farm. On the garden areas, our foraging chickens dispose of all pests, control weed seeds and fertilise the ground. Particular nutrient deficiencies are dealt with on a case by case basis, for instance the nut trees have received a mix of zinc oxide and gypsum. Given that only high value products leave the farm, the loss of nutrients and organic carbon is minimised.
Our products are sold locally so transport costs are minimal and because produce is sold fresh, no cold or CA storage is required. We use the same containers for many months, simply picking up empties when we deliver goods to local restaurants, green grocers or families.
We have one significantly higher input than conventional growers time. Much time is spent observing, shifting animals from one patch to another, maintaining relationships with customers and looking after a complex range of crops and animals. If one enjoys the work and feels that it is important that a sustainable land use model is developed, one could consider accepting a lower hourly rate of pay than people whose main drive comes from maximising production, income and wealth in a world that is buckling under the effects of consumerism.
Our marketing is by word of mouth and we pitch out prices between wholesale and retail. We supply restaurants, green grocers and some families, as well as selling directly to people who visit the farm for field walks and short courses.
Other growers use subscription farming, food cooperatives or have farm shops. Some simply use the wholesale fruit market. Those interested in community supported agriculture will be interested in the tour of Michael Ableman from California in Nov/Dec 1995. (Enquiries to phone/fax (08) 364 0717).
Regarding a property as an investment which can return interest, we can divide that return into an increase in capital value or net profit (tax write-offs are generally caught by the increase in capital value or equity).
In our case, we are steadily increasing our equity in a property which has increased in value five fold since we bought it. Like most people who own property within 50km of a capital city (which accounts for some of Australia's best land), we rely on off-farm income to achieve our goals.
While the Government continues with the 'level playing field' concept which forces our primary producers to accept the World's lowest prices for goods (whether dumped, subsidised or resulting from exploitation of the environment or workers) there is an enormous disadvantage to growers who elect to produce food in an environmentally responsible way. So we should be making urban Australians aware of the need for paradigm and policy change.
It is time for the 95% of Australians who live in towns to start taking some responsibility for the stewardship of the country in which they live rather than whining about poorly educated farmers who thrash the environment (to earn a miserable income because of economic policies approved by the Australian public who mainly live in cities). The revenue statement for a food forest typically will have less expenditure and less income than a conventional property as optimum yields and food quality are sought rather than maximum yields, however the net profit or loss may be very similar.
Certainly in the survey of organic and conventional farms done by Els Wynen of La Trobe University, there was no spectacular difference. I am not aware of any such survey in the area of horticulture.
Some 'food foresters' are extremely successful commercial producers such as Brian Mason at Forest Range - whilst others are more interested in ecological enrichment and self sufficiency.
Looking at our development budget for key crops, we are at the point where the general income is about to equal the expenditure. From here on the tree crops will steadily increase in production and we will get some gross margin figures from a semi-mature food forest system. Meanwhile we will eat well, stay warm, meet wonderful people, raise sane children and do out bit for the future of the planet.
We run short courses for people who are interested in the practicalities of building food forests and welcome contact from other designers.