Permaculture is something I learned about 2 years ago so I planted fruit trees, shrubs and still need to add more to it, BUT I just actually learned about something that has me even more excited then permaculture and that is Electroculture which is a BIG WOW when you learn this!!!
@@rootsinkarst8433 I have not seen van Eck take any credit for permaculture ideas, and so far as I have seen he very much acknowledges the inspirations and prior work he is building on. It’s just an oversight in this Leaf of Life documentary *about* his project to get these ideas implemented in national and EU policy, that doesn’t (yet!) make the distinction as clear as it should have been. @@LeafofLifeWorld this is excellent content in every other way. Could you do a part 2 where you make clear the exciting contribution van Eck’s work is making that is distinct from and builds on all of the progress that has been made in permaculture projects and food forests around the world? Kudos on synthesizing these complex issues into such a short tight message so it gets in front of many more people.
Indigenous people are the originators of this plan. Not some Dutch dude. We should be looking to Indigenous culture for guidance in many aspects of our lives. If Australia had listened to the Indigenous there would be none of the huge fires affecting them now. It’s unfortunate that when it’s a white dude all of a sudden people listen?
This was also a concept devised by Bill Mollison at the University of Tasmania in 1978. He called it Permaculture & it is still used in different counties around the world.
I came down to the comments to make this point; glad you beat me to it. I'm also glad this concept is spreading. Peter Andrews in Australia is another person to research. I hope all of us adopt this.
Geoff Lawson was taught by Mollison. He has a good project in the desert near Jordan. Morag Gamble is another permaculuturist teaching others in this technique. The more the better.
I did similar to this in my garden in the UK over the last few years. I have many varieties of fruit trees and shrubs, which yield a lot of fruit, every year. The wildlife that visits our garden is spectacular.
Fruit is sugar and largely devoid of protein. It may constitute a small portion of a healthy person's diet. And for those with metabolic syndrome, fruit, like all sugar should be avoided.
Baer Uuttehei I don't hear anyone saying it has to happen in the Netherlands, their dream mega city may have been set back by the election of those who oppose it but the dream still lives on in the EU. Just watched a video from Spain where it's claimed the Spanish Govt. is annoyed because their largest building company is relocating their HQ to the Netherlands, and I doubt they did that just to enjoy a wetter climate.
@@wjf0ne forget about the electionwin of the 'opposing party': that is just a charade! The party with initials BBB (what does that remind you of?) is the product of an advertisement agency that is entangled with Monsanto (Round Up/Glyphosat). The party voted, already before the elections, alongside the governing parties. So nothing new there!
The biggest downside is that it isn't compatible with current food production chains. One advantage that wasn't mentioned would be that it doesn't require flat land, it can be done on hillsides or in ravines. this type of farming would be ideal in places where tractors cannot go and maybe you want to prevent mudslides, fires or floods.
Not a downside.. lol It's the CHAINS that destroy everything. How much is needed just for McDonalds!!!??? I don't eat out side my kitchen much, so let's just get rid of CHAIN PRODUCTION,,, BY NOT CONSUMING IT. if the Budweiser situation didn't show you how to vote with your money, God help you.. HE is helping me create my own nutrition.
Silvopastoralism is a great Holistic Land Management strategy. Some of the largest stands of old growth forest anywhere in America is in the crosstimbers ecoregions of Texas, because it’s mostly rough; rocky land and prairie that isn’t useful for much besides running livestock or hunting. The forests aren’t usually taller than 30-40 feet there and the trees don’t have much commercial value, despite the diversity. Intensive rotational grazing on better land, or extensive agriculture elsewhere seems like it will be a bigger part of agroecology going forth. It would be cool to see more people utilizing intermittent grazing, or mobbing, even with other people’s livestock, in the future. I’ve had some great results with ‘hoof cultivation’ and horses for seeding hay pastures, but they have giant spades for feet!
@@DenniskuhhNL Yes, the finances do matter. There is savings in input though and right now we are only speaking through our assumptions in general terms. A closer look at the details would reveal the bottom line. I simply commented because monoculture has so many problems that we are not aware of and it is simply not working when we look at the long term effects. This is in real terms, not theory. Just saying let us not discount something outright without looking deeper into it.
@@nerlind oh I'm all for this idea. I just don't see an easy way of automizing harvestation of randomly growing forests. You just can't beat the modern harvesting techniques with a bunch of workers combing through a forest with a bucket. Sure, those forest grown products are more healthy, but you need A LOT of workers & manhours to get the same yield. Because of that, products would get signifactly more expensive which would harm our living standard. Also, farmers can no longer mass produce products that people actually want. We would be dependent on what the forest offers us, which would cause scarcity for products people want, and leftover waste for all others. Creating more segregation between the poor and the rich.
nightmare? sounds a lot nicer to pick fruits and nuts there than sitting in a cubicle 9-5 every single day... it would be healther for you too... but of course you would have less time drewling mindlessly infront of the TV...
For anyone who has learned about Permaculture this is a bit unnecessarily obscure... I thought there was some kind of new discovery, but food forests are already a well known approach to most people who know about agriculture. Admittedly I think what Wouter van Eck is doing is very interesting, largely because he's kept details of his yields, which helps to prove that food forestry can compete with industrial ag. But you miss out a key aspect which is that we all need to adapt our DIET... currently a huge proportion of calories we eat come entirely from wheat, rice and corn, whereas a food forest produces a diversity of food crops. So to make use of them we need behavioural change interventions to encourage people to adapt, to learn how to cook with these foods and to enjoy them.
nicely put: Most Americans only eat "food products". They insist on food products even in the evidence that 75% of their own deaths are caused by diet (I made that up but you get the idea) Americans prefer to consume their pills and potions. Maybe we have to accept permaculture is optimal in countries where people aren't addicted to food products? I live in Mexico and still have but an occasional success with "converts"
Wheat, rice and corn all lead to a myriad of health problems, people would do well to consider abandoning the SAD and exploring better, healthier options.
Thank you, Cleona, You have answered one of my (Western European) questions; namely: "What about wheat (for bread, pasta and so on) and potatoes (for everything!)?" Answer: "Change your diet!" (We have only had potatoes here for about 500 years.) Best wishes, Luke
@@ShieTar_ no doubt humans need to keep doing better... but when those in power keep reminding us that there are too many people, they mean its you and me.. we are the too many people. . No one wants to destroy the planet. . But there are other solutions than starving us all...
@@pieterveenders9793 Het is eerder al toegepast door andere volkeren, o.a. in India. Andrew Millison op youtube laat dit tot in details zien en interviewt de mensen die het hebben gedaan daar. Het een naam geven, betekent niet dat we de uitvinders/bedenkers zijn.
Food forests are more productive as a collective of calories produced than standard agriculture, but harder to make a living doing it because of the stretched out tasks on the farm. It's also harder to make mortgage payments with it
Because it is a fun garden, but not a real sollution on "how to feed everybody a good, solid diet, year round". It is a nice experment in "how to get by without pesitcides and how to optimally combine pieces of nature/semi-edible plants/ to make something that is usefull for survival" but it will not save the "worldhunger/overpopulation-problem" or even get us out of our current predicament where we need to step up production, but also use less pesticides, cut down on nitrogene and CO2 emissions. We are a super-tiny country and almost outproduce something as large as the combined USA... that does not happen for free, we are making a mess in the process.
I am from the Netherlands as well, work in a food forest and ampart of the food forest network. I can promise you that they are popping up everywhere since the last 2/3 years, and because it's so recent, that's probably the reason why you haven't heard of it. You'll hear about this a lot more in the upcoming years
@@ekd5213 VEE boeren moeten weg, althans een hoop daarvan. wanneer snappen de mensen nou eens, dat we de groene boeren heel graag willen houden, en dat er juist meer ruimte en subsidei vrij komt om de groente en fruit telers zo veel mogelijk te steunen om future proof te worden. we produceren te veel vlees en vee voer ten kosten van ons millieu, onze water kwaliteit en de vruchtbaarheid van onze grond. tijd voor modernisering en elke dag een biefstukje is echt niet meer nodig vandaag de dag.
"170,000 hectares converted to food forest can feed 1 million people". Great. How about the other 16 million Dutch folks and hundreds of millions of people outside the Netherlands who currently eat Dutch grown and produced food?
I've been doing a micro version of this in my backyard for over 15years now only two miles from a major American city. It's very hilly where I live, so we incorporate bioswales to slow and collect the rain water when it flows. It's awesome and we have crops coming up every year that we didn't even plant!
@@jondoe5536 That's fantastic&if u can be as self sufficient as possible,which means less reliance that has to be a good thing(if only frm a personal state of mind) And it's got to be more economical! And I hope ur managing to sell some of ur produce on the side(farmers market& like)
I own a large area of land and leave 20% of the property in native conditions. When Dad was alive he donated 300 acres of land to conservation. I go there from time to time just to see how big the tree's actually get in the wild. I do wish we still had the giant Chestnut trees,but a imported insect killed them all.
Yes, I love that you shared this comment. Our farm has retired many sections of land to regeneration. Areas that are not great for commercial agriculture. Trees are planted in these sections every year. Some 25 000 trees now planted over 20 years. And so many more can be planted..... I suspect now the land has had enough rest and could take in different species of trees now. Thank you for this. Gives us hope
This is one man's initiative though. And the US there's a lot more to it that military spending. Even if the US had spent 1.6% GDP on the military as the Netherlands did pre-covid (it's up now), it still would have had an overall 2.6% budget deficit. And unlike the Netherlands, still have shitty infrastructure and public transportation, sub-par education and no universal healthcare. The US needs a major overhaul, but it's not coming any time soon. But people can start food forests alone or in groups though.
@@MrMezmerized The problem of coercive govt. forced on all by popular demand is worldwide. If just one (1) country started a govt. based on choice, not violence and threats, it would be as a beacon of freedom to all and therefore it would be attacked by the United Nations before people could learn they self-enslave when they support the present worldwide political paradigm.
One thing not mentioned, but very important: How much time does it take to harvest the crops? Way more then harvesting with machines. It's very labour intensive. Something we already have a big problem with. It's not going to work on large scales.
Monoculture is a flaming disaster. Permaculture is another name for this. Lots of people have been doing this for years. Geoff Lawton has a lot on youtube about it. Farming in this manner requires zero external input. It works off of what nature does better than suits behind desks do. The problem with too many people is that they're incapable thinking their way through the dynamics involved in farming. They foolishly believe you toss sees on the ground and they grow then you pick. That is why centrally controlled agriculture of any sort especially the WEF version always results in abject failure and finger pointing. It's a lesson nobody seems to learn.
@@richardhawkins2248 Some crops don't care about being on the same ground for decades. And for the rest, we rotate. One year it's potato's, next year it wheat and then it's carrots. Every harvest leaves plantwaste that will be plowed into the ground to fertilize the next growth.
@@richardhawkins2248 You didn't aswer my question on how to organize harvesting. Not to mention storage. You can't harvest all year round. A lot of crops, fruits and nuts can only be harvest in a short period of time. You need people for this. And worse, you need those people everywhere at the same time. We don't have that many people (let alone people who are willing). There is your biggest problem.
@@MrPoillekewell, yes and no. We are student's of nature but the "culture" part is for human conscious choices according to knowledge based on observation of natural ecosystems. Nature does not create a geodesic dome greenhouse or a compost toilet and you don't use the name permaculture for a wild rainforest or an ocean reef system. But you can use knowledge about how reef and rainforest work to improve the ecosystem of your garden - and it is fair to name that a permaculture approach.
@@ludwikawykurz4345 damn, you gotme, as a newbie i thought it was that way, lol. As i thought the first agriculture came from crops found in a food forest and planted as a monoculture... Thanks for the lesson :)
In Canada, we call it going to the wilderness because if you know where to look in Canada, you’ll find wild berry bushes already growing you’ll find hazelnuts bushes you’ll find fruit trees, strawberry patches, you name it you can find it in the Canadian wilderness provided it grows in our climate But one word of caution, black bears and grizzly bears likes to grazing in these areas so you might become food to
Thanks for the comment DUH.....try living on GRUB HAMBURGERS sport !! right now you can eat anthing you want..but what if you only had food made up of BUGS ..FUBAR FUBAR FUBAR !
Growing food is one side of the medal. Harvesting the other side. I see a problem: harvesting in a food forest requires a lot of manual labor. I think it is good for producing some types of food but not for all food. E.g. grain is needed in huge amounts of quantity. Even if a food forest can produce so much grain, harvesting will be impossible, because the machines cannot be used.
@@jankaas2760 How would that work for cities like - London - with millions of inhabitants and no easy access to such land even if such woodland existed. If they all of them had to drive say 20mile out of the city to access the land and then 'pick their food' surely that would lead to more pollution not less. In modern households where both/all adults work, often long hours, where would they find the time to do this. What happens if I arrive and find 'no suitable food' left? how is pricing agreed? Looks like a great small scale solution in rural communities, but I can't see it being viable more widely.
Permaculture is spreading slowly around the world. I hope to see a lot of it in urban settings, I'd sure like to see it in my area, and am working toward it in my small piece of property on the west coast of the U.S.
I think this is a great plan.... but it will never be implemented in a top-down method due to the huge lobbying bank rolls funded by pharmaceuticals and agricultural industries. Keep in mind that Bayer also owns Monsato, so they are financially incentivized to keep the world on an inflammatory diet with a heavy grain dependency.
Iowa in particular is such a travesty. We have a lot of cropland in Michigan but at least there are forests off in the distance. Farmland does degrade quite quickly over time. Many old abandoned farms become scrub forests. Scientists thought it would take a century or more to become a full natural forest. But if we are smart, and bring in compost and woodchip mulch to degraded soil, and fell some of the dying older trees, newer healthier trees shoot up. Fell & mulch weak trees and plant more of the varieties you want, keeping only the healthiest. 100 years can be compressed to 15 or 20 years.
From an Iowa resident. Iowa has not been forested since at least before the last glacial period. Most of northern Iowa was bogs and swamps. There are currently more trees in Iowa then at any time in the last 20,000 years. It is true that modern agriculture produces dead dirt not living soil. It is also true that grass captures more co2 then trees do over their lifespans.
@@Nphen In Iowa you won't find abandoned farms. There might be a few dormant farms, but that is usually for legal reasons such as inheritance litigation. Occasionally there is land willed to the state as nature reserves. One such nature reserve near me went from corn field to 50 foot dense trees composed of maple, white oak, walnut, cherry, and locust in 50 years. Our farm ground should have been better cared for, true, but still has some of the highest organic matter content for farmed ground in the nation. I don't doubt your sincerity, but you really need to select your sources better.
We did this in North and South America, a long time ago. After European diseases wiped out most of our population over the first couple hundred years after contact, we lost our knowledge of horticulture, and devolved into hunter/gatherers. We have since rediscovered our heritage, and its nice to see that it has had a positive impact on the Europeans, even if it did take a few more hundred years and a misanthropic Australian in order to catch on.
Sounds great, however without details of what is actually grown its difficult to say how good this actually is. I would like full details of what is grown in this food forest, specifically the vegetables grown.
There are no details because there are no harvests worth mentioning. Did you crunch the numbers? 5,000 tons of harvest from how many square meters? This is a fairy-tale!
Always the calculating mind, isn't it? The fact that no chemicals are involved, and wildlife thrives in this food forest, offers lasting security into the future. While the mono culture farming ends 1 day, with the soil entirely lifeless. No calculating of yield anymore, just dead soil.
My thoughts exactly. Only very skilled and knowledgeable people must be involved in the process. This is going to be quite a task, as the whole paradigm would need to shift for it to work.
It's a sincere question. I know there are farms that are actually doing this, I'm just asking how does it work in terms of logistics. Again, is it all just done by hand?
Sounds great, like a lot of fairy tales do 😉. You’d make the story far easier to believe giving some numbers illustrating how much of what crops those two hectares of food forest are actually producing
Also ... a description of how all these different food types would be harvested from wild woodland (because it would be tough labour, and time consuming). Then there is packaging, transport, and retail (before it goes off). Neither described was the battle of life, where insects place their eggs in fruit (where they grow, before exiting the fruit). I can cut out the bad bits in fruit, but most people would want fruit to be undamaged.
The whole reason the worlds large scale farms are the way they are is so not everyone has to be a farmer. With food forests many more people would have to be farmers since there is not a way to mass harvest these more natural food forests. Works well for small scale like homesteads though.
Mass harvest is an illusion it only works with grain crops, most fruit and veg farms use human hands for harvesting. Often they are casual or seasonal workers many 'illegal' immigrants, under paid, overworked and bad working conditions, exposure to heat, since no shade on moncultures and exposure to chemicals. The work they would do in a food forest would be much more pleasant compared to a big agricultural farm.
@@LeafofLifeWorld Besides fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers, pretty much everything can be mass harvested. Some examples are Potato Wheat Corn Rice Soybeans Rapeseed Sugar cane Cotton Alfalfa Clover Wouldn't call it an illusion by any stretch when those are big food staples. But yes, if such a "food forest" could be laid out in such a way as to allow access to some smaller machinery meant for transport, it could be a viable alternative for vegetable and fruit production; there still remains one problem though, and that is the impact of nature on the produce. People don't want damaged goods, i.e. fruits damaged because they were used for insect reproduction and similar things you wouldn't find in the "not quite sterile but not far off" conditions you find in monoculture. Might well be a more pleasant working condition, though the pay might have to be adjusted downwards to account for lower productivity per worker (longer travel to drop off goods, wilder patterns that require more thought, compared to nice uniform accessible fruit/vegs). I don't see a reason illegal immigrants or other people with little recourse to abuse would not be used for "food forest" harvesting. That's a different topic and I feel is unrelated.
I have been trying to be self sufficient for 30 years without success in Australia. My soil is poor, the tall gum trees take all the nutrients, then we have dought, then floods, then fires, then insects and animals eating everything and digging them up. However, the place looks beautiful and we have created a bird sanctuary and a pleasant place to live. The food still comes from the nearest shops.. Everywhere is different and there is no plan that works well in every place without total dedication and back breaking work from what I have seen. And even then there is no food growing naturally here. Good luck.
Funny you should have posted this...The You Tube last vid I watched was 'A Literal Oasis - Syntropic Agroforestry at Lightening Ridge, NSW, Australia'. Found the reference to the 'literal oasis' slightly misleading, but otherwise found it very informative. Hope you find it helpful, and Good Luck to you too!
Growing the food is one thing, but harvesting it is another. This seems like it would take way too much manpower to harvest for it to be of much practical use in a larger scale.
This is how our aboriginal ancestors tailored their landscapes to their own needs. The ‘conquerors’ of these lands did not know how to value what they conquered, believing (wrongly) that the natives were naive and unsophisticated, living like animals. They had systems for allowing certain plants that they used to thrive. Now, the real question is: can we wrest enough arable land from corporate farming interests to make this transition possible?
I have just two questions about economics of such an endeavor. How you manage to harvest different plants in different seasons? In addition even if the soil could provide for a better growth of plants how will they compete for the sunlight with trees?
The Biggest Little Farm did a great job building a 'farm forest' like this from dead soil in only 7 years but also used animals. They are still doing very well years later.
The efficiencies of modern agriculture aren't gained from total edible products by weight per acre, but largely from specialization. Harvesting hundreds of crops from food forests and processing the products for long-term storage would require orders of magnitude more knowledge and skill than processing a single product.
I think there is something important missing from this video. I listened to a video from Wouter van Eck a while ago. He explained his version of the food forest and how it needs to be rational ie easy to harvest and scalable. So while it is building on an idea from permaculture it is something a little different.
Thank you for pointint that out! Yes, it would have been nice to have had that in the video, as that would have given it some substance that it was lacking imo. There are so many videos already about how fantastic permaculture is (and it is), but so little about the important transition from small idealists to methods and organizations for actually feeding the masses.
"to harvest and scalable". That's what I was looking for in the comments. It does not matter if it produces x-times more food as the farmer next door. How do you get the food out of this 'jungle'? :)
@@GerritDeSmedt Wouter van Eck explains this in his TH-cam video 'Food Forests Future Role ; Feeding the World?!' He explains the difference between a 'romantic' food forest ie a jungle and a rational one. I imagine it is the rational version which he presented to the government for the Dutch Plan!
@@peasinourthyme5722 I agree that permaculture is great and I think the more people adopt in either wholly or partially the better. I think all food forests have so much potential, whether 'romantic' or the 'rational' version.
@@ronamcintosh8762 yes, i believe food forest really is the way go, and we need the whole spectrum from romantic to rational. We also need i think to accept a different agricultural economical model where a lot more people are working there than currently. (In the sc developed world)
This is neat! My dad always said a lot of farm land was worn out and if they didn't use a bunch of fertilizers on it they wouldn't be able to grow anything. I live in the US and we could certainly use something like this to help get our soils healthy again and help our environment and people to be well. Thankyou!
Also check out dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web. As a leading microbiologist in the US she developed a compost based method to regenerate degraded soils, that can be adopted by large scale agriculture.
Very nice as a private enterprise (Van Eck is selling food forest courses for more than €500 per person) but it is impossible to feed a population with this concept. Harvesting will be way too expensive.
I had heard of the food forest concept a few years ago and thought it was an amazing idea, so I created my own food forest and I love it. My goal is to do food preservation from my excess produce. Self-sufficiency and community trade are invaluable. I am in full support of this!
I am thinking of growing a very small food forest in my backyard. What I wonder about is how much time it takes every day after things are planted. Is it more for people with plenty of spare time?
It will be hardly impossible to become or continue to be the 2nd largest food producer of the world with food forests. Food needs to be hand picked so it will only work on a small scale or many, many small farms. This also does not consider that the Netherlands is one of the biggest milk producers of the world and also does not consider meat production. If every Dutch person would do this in their backyard it would be great. But most people don't even have a backyard. Let alone one that is big enough to feed them. This is very idealistic way of thinking and not realistic for feeding the world.
I am also a Farmer, think it's a good idea. The question is how much Fruit I can sell in €, some times is isn't easy to find buyers for organic fruits, or is it just a new subvention game. And right now in Holland many conventional Farmers are on riot, because they forced to give up there kind of Farming.
The issue is that this big piece of land is barely enough to supply food for 1 family while the professional farmers have more production. If everyone would use this low yield farming, 100% of the country would need to be used as farmland as we get more and more people (e.g. from immigration) to feed thus making this kind of farming for the few only. Luckily, BBB has grown faster and more than this type of farming so that we probably end up with more effective means of feeding the people and cost effective foods (i.e. vegetables and meet).
I believe costs are lower but does it really yield more product? Also, isn't it way to labor intensive to harvest all fruits and vegetables? Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of improving biodiversity while at the same time growing crops and decreasing the amount of nitrogen in the soil and water. Though I'm not shure this is feasable at a larger scale. At least not in a heavily intensified agricultural industry like the Netherlands.
we don't lack people... people can do meaningful jobs of collecting food in food forests... or the same people can do pseudojobs shuffling paper in an officer, while getting stressed over pretending to be really busy and important, trying to justify their position so they don't get fired... one is sustainable... one is useless...
@@LiLBitsDK I expect you to show up and do this manual labour for half a living wage lol. (Half because nobody would be able to afford the full price) Social engineering geniuses have killed millions of people in the past.
Seems to me that it’s ideal for enabling communities to source their own local food. Even if it’s not practical as a widely used way of agriculture, it would be great for smaller towns or even larger cities to support themselves by a local agricultural source. I live in Houston, Tx and I could see the farmland surrounding Houston being changed to this as a way of an almost complete source of produce. This would cut down on importing so much from other places. I’m sure there is more to this than was in this video but it seems like a good idea to me.
I find this a very interesting principle and would definitely want to know more about it. But I do have some doubts about the claims and wonder how certain things are handled. For example: 1. With so many different crops, how are they individually harvested? With all crops next to each other and overlapping, the harvest must be very labour intensive as there is no space for mechanical harvesters. 2. The yield will be small per crop because there is only a small amount of that crop. Economies of scale will be hard to accomplish. 3. This might work for some crops, but for many others it will not be possible (e.g. grains) 4. how to deal with fungus, bacteria and insects that want to eat the crops? I imagine different fungi will affect different crops. With everything so close, any pesticide or poison will also touch crops that are not affected by that specific fungus/bacteria. 5. Not all crops are as popular by the population. Can the more popular crops also be grown in this context or only certain specific ones? 6. The claim that this grants bigger yields than traditional farming is hard to believe as traditional farming does everything to get an optimal yield for one product. Every millimeter of space is used for an optimal crop yield. But if so, how is this measured? But, this does sound very interesting and i would love to see a much smaller example than this (for people with only a small patch of land).
small area, small crop... large food forest, large crop... harvest and eat what is in season... try to get away from the "we need big machines to harvest this, else it isn't efficient" those thoughts are what brought us into the trouble we are in
@@LiLBitsDK this means everyone has to live close to the crop to be able to harvest it, and a lot are needed to harvest a lot. Those people won't be able to do much else as this will be very time consuming. You are basically foraging not farming. You will not be producing enough excess to feed those in cities, so they have to move out of the cities to where they can forage for themselves, whilst not spending time on their normal job. As for eating foods in season, that's what mainly happened when I was a kid, but you still had farms growing the stuff. And you need food through the winter when nothing grows so you need to produce enough to supply the population through the winter. Which is possibly the root of the "western" profit motive ie you must produce more than you need now as you will need it later in winter. So just producing a little and varied crop is fine for a handful of people, but it isn't practical for a large population. The last time the majority survived mainly on similar foraging in Europe was probably before the bronze age. Since farming began it has allowed society and population to grow.
@@crabby7668 so you live close to your work now? define close? even to this day there are "day laborers" that travel around the countries to harvest whatever is in season in the various areas... not hard and don't waste my time if you don't know the difference of forage and forest farming... forage = you try to find stuff farming = you harvest the stuff because you know where it is
@@LiLBitsDK if this were to be done as a replacement for traditional farming as some (you?) are positing, then everyone would need time to do their farming, which would detract from their normal activities. How many can spend 8 hours at work and then spend multiple hours farming? Not many I would bet, particular if farming properly. Farming is not an easy job, particularly on a commercial scale. Yes there are day rate workers who travel round real farms harvesting crops, usually for money. That means that the farm has to produce enough excess to sell to be able to pay them. In this theoretical scenario it still has to be enough to feed them and their families or they are going to be back home doing their own forest farming and not available to work for someone else. If you run it as a commune then people need to live close to it or they have an even worse problem with available time. There seems to be different ideas on how this is supposed to operate ie either commercially or as a commune/small holding type of operation. I severely doubt whether the productivity would be anywhere enough to run commercially on a large scale ie feeding the general population., rather than just selling some mushrooms to a local restaurant. As a private small holding or commune it has its merits, but people would still have to spend a lot of their time on it. If it produced much more product than normal farming as claimed, it would be highly unlikely that traditional farming would have evolved away from it the way it has. Also planting non woodland crops isn't likely to work very well because the trees will block the light that the crops need. Woodland products tend to grow where they want to, so either you have to make them grow where you want them to, which will tend to micro monoculture because it's easier for you to have one type of plant all together, or you run a natural woodland where everything is all over the shop. If the latter then it is akin to foraging. Yes you know where the trees or bushes are but you don't necessarily know how much crop and when is best to harvest (usually in dribs and drabs) unless you spend a lot of time in the forest observing the crops. I suspect many people are viewing this as a if it were a hobby rather than a serious method of feeding the population. That is doubly so if you have to produce enough to keep the population fed over winter. A slight adjustment to your definition of farming. "Harvesting the crop because you know where it is" and the essential point" because you put it there in the first place"
@@crabby7668 no they wouldn't... guess you have never worked with farming or have any clue about... atleast that is the vibe I get from you... I have worked with various sorts of farming for 30 years... 1 person working with farming with food forests can feed a LOT more than one person... will it take more people than now? yes... will that be bad? no... is there tons of useless pseudojobs now? yes... can those people doing useless stuff produce food? yes... but to be honest I don't care... as long as I can produce my own food then you can starve when they ban all the farming as they are doing now... enjoy your grubs and printed meats and tofu crap...
The main point here is that food forests as well as permaculture, organic/biological agriculture is very labour intensive. Meaning much less production per farmer. Meaning if introduced large scale you need many more farmers but also the price of food will increase substantially.
@@marychristenson3913 you can combine food forests with grasslands/wetlands with cattle on... instead of sloppy feedlots... it won't be as intensive but the quality will be way better + healthy for the nature instead of toxic sludge knee deep on the animals
This looks like an expansion on the French Intensive gardening method dating back to the 1500's- it works! The late Alan Chadwick could create an ecosystem over barren rock with the right stuff.
The only problem with this is the efficiency of harvest. Monoculture allows us to harvest outrageously quickly with specialised machinery built for a very specific task. When growing en masse this is massively important as it stops bugs, funghi, mould etc from eating/destroying vital crops. Its a great idea, just not very scaleable, so the more peope required to be fed this way, the less efficient it becomes.
This idea is hardly revolutionary, has been around for a long time. This is charming and a lovely way to cultivate fruit and berries. At the same time, it would be vastly more labor intensive which would erase the savings from other inputs. In addition, this won't keep bread on the shelf at the local market either. Didn't see any wheat in that forest.
There are plenty of examples of Permaculture operations around the world and I believe this will be the way we farm going forward. Exciting times ahead.
@@LeafofLifeWorld In a modern industrial country like the Netherlands, are there sufficient numbers of people who want to farm the land (by hand, no less), or do they have to rely on migrant workers like many of the places in California? This is back-breaking labour which is why most people in North America choose to let someone else do it as long as they get their fresh lettuce in the middle of winter.
@Roots in Karst Actually Robert Hart predates within the food forest idea of Bill's expansion into Permaculture and its wider and more encompassing processes and zones, etc.
not sure about men changing the world unless there is a lot of clever pr involved. Nature of humanity is way out of place and time with nature on our planet and clever men are not what we need. We need to find our way as animals who get on better with life.
The Foodforest is permaculture. Permaculture needs many employees. One would therefore have to get people out of the factories and employ them in agriculture.
As a Dutchy living in the farm-country for over 40 years, I can say that this is a nice ideology, but not applicaple for large scale. Plus what will happen when a dissease hits and destroys the trees and or crops. There are too many factors. Plus, farmers land and their houses are being stolen by the government and the banks, and if you think they will give that land to plans like this... ermmmmm.....
There is no way that a 1.1 acre forest produces 5,000 tonnes of fruit and nuts. I doubt it does 5,000 kg ( 5 tonnes) from the whole 2 hectares (5 acres). Magic thinking involved here.
Wooter? 5.000 tons annually food? Dude, I’ve bin there, it’s a bunch of weeds with a berry here and there. 5.000 tons of food on one and a half hectare … sure. Am I one of the last none poked human beings with a functioning frontal cortex left or something?
Well, it seems a good idea from the standpoint of natural variety, solving ecologic issues etc. But in terms of productive growth, harvesting, transportation, storage and downstream further production of food it is rather far fetched. For a local food chain, in certain seasons, with a wealthy and eco-minded consumer group it might work somewhat. So this falls into the category ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’.
The 'local food chain' could encompass an entire country like Holland within a decade or two, so could be super productive for the country,; but as ever, the difficulties of changing the mind of Big Farmer (I know!) away from efficiency and the bottom line, may well keep the plan within 'controllable' local areas. Wonder how many trees and bushes I could fit into my garden?
Productive growth? Harvesting is done the same way just one gets a mixed basket not one variety only, transport is reduced because we can grow them nearby where people live in any climate. Storage? Well nature stores food just fine on the plant itself,
Agreed. While it's a wonderful way to regenerate what we have "destroyed" the reality is, it is much more time consuming to search for a meal in a forest rather than plucking it from a cultivated row. Big food corporations and farmers may not be willing to give up their economic chain so easily. Also, to try and harvest for a global population so many more people would have to get involved in agriculture (not necessarily a bad thing per se) and create a food forest for themselves and local community. Harvests would have to be done individually, not commercially, eliminating produce sections in our grocery stores (also not a bad thing IMO). I'm all for it because I love gardening but unless we have a global catastrophe that wipes out the current social and economic structure, I don't see this happening.
Monoculture is a flaming disaster. Permaculture is another name for this. Lots of people have been doing this for years. Geoff Lawton has a lot on youtube about it. Farming in this manner requires zero external input. It works off of what nature does better than suits behind desks do. The problem with too many people is that they're incapable thinking their way through the dynamics involved in farming. They foolishly believe you toss sees on the ground and they grow then you pick. That is why centrally controlled agriculture of any sort especially the WEF version always results in abject failure and finger pointing. It's a lesson nobody seems to learn.
I'm 74 and food poor, living in one room with $100 dollars in Food Stamps a month, and I know I have all the skills and knowledge to produce all the healthy food I need on half an acre of good land. My quality of life would change immeasurably and my life span would lengthen.
I wonder... I believe the statements made but I am missing the production level compared to mono-culture. Will the farmers have the same profitability? What would be their incentive to move to this?
concrete and bricks store the heat... trees and shrubs block the heat... it also protects the soil from the suns rays = the soil is cool and moist instead of dry and dead... deserts have no trees to protect the soil, the soil dies and blows away... so that is why you gotta plant trees to protect the soils and yes in the start you need to protect and water the trees but in the end they will bring more water to the area and hold more water instead of it rushing into the ocean when it rains
When the air moves through the forrest it creates the venturi effect, in other words it is compressing and expanding as it moves through denser, and less dense forrest. A d we know that when a compressed gas expands it's temperature drops.
About seventy-five years ago my father bought a house in a little subdivision. He planted fruit trees all over the yard, grapes along the fences that bordered two sides of the yard with a house showing one end and a raspberry patch on the other. In the summer we had apples peaches pears plums cherries apricots and sugar pears. We had grapes Concord green and honeydew. We had raspberries growing and hazelnuts. Along with a wide variety of garden vegetables inclusion Swiss chard watermelon tomatoes green peppers radishes asparagus and several other. We gave many fresh fruits to our neighbors my mother registered nurse and mother of pork and many vegetables and baked many pies and desserts. She sewed costumes for the school band and Halloween and V plays our school put on. She was very adaptable and wonderful mother. In the Summers we go into the woods and collect Hickory nuts and black walnuts and pick dewberries blackberries and loganberries in the resting corn fields. When I woke up with a child in the sixties I would go out in the yard and eat some cherries and then some grapes and go look in the garden and basically get my breakfast off of the ground. In the 50 my father had chickens and other wild foul. It was a wonderful childhood. I wish I'd known then what I know now. God bless my parents may they rest in happiness. Other people's yards in this subdivision were neatly trimmed and some had a few trees and some head absolutely no shade in the summer. We can change the way we shop we can change the way we live and we can save the planet but we must put away the cars and the dependency on big agricultural products. It's much healthier I've lived to be over 70 now, by at least three months. Take care of God blessing everyone plant yourself a damn Garden you'll feel better. The more gardens you plant better you live.
Masanobu Fukuoka came up with this concept of the food forest, in the "one straw revolution" book in 1975. Then Bill Mollison adapted it into Permaculture
This method is in balance with the environment, it uses a different method of food production but still provides food.It is used in Cuba with great success.
Sorry...I am a Dutch woman 69 years old......But I don't agree with your plan at all...!! That Wouter is a phantast in agriculture.....!! I agree we shouldn't use ground fertilisors too much.....!! But you should realise that the vision of the EU is being presented here....!! The Dutch farmers are educated in using as little fertiliser as possible....!! Please stop advertising the EU-money machine...!! The Dutch need agriculture bringing food for the coming shortages....!! The Dutch government wants to gain farmland for building their big cities they want to controll the people with...!! Our Royals and Mark Rutte, our prime minister, tend to chose for that construction....BUT BE SURE THAT THE DUTCH PEOPLE DON'T...,! But Europe only gets CNN-LIKE NEWS.......MISINFORMATION...,!!
It is really exciting to know people are finally starting to understand the oneness of all. When I became a master gardener, the most incredible thing I realized was the symbiotic relationship between people, plants, and earth. Going deeper, look at pictures of soil mycorrhizae fungus, our veins and arteries, lightning, and solar system photos. God made oneness between everything. Hopefully we will stop desecrating the earth with pesticides and herbicides by replacing them over time with practices based on understanding the symbiotic relationship that exists.
Look up the meaning of the word 'incredible' and in fact the word 'credible' while you're at it .... then consider the meaning of what you have written
The Netflix documentary - Kiss the ground - is all about regenerative farming. Great concept. The Dutch plan applies this concept as well and takes is one step further with the idea of food forrests. Sounds great. But will this approach really enable production of food to serve our current diets? I would imagine that it would at least change the menu quite significantly. And since human nature is to resist change how would this plan bring about such change?
This is the first time I have heard of the concept "Food Forest". I'll need to learn more but on the face of it, it looks good, maybe very good indeed. Additional benefits would be that a diverse selection of species would mean protection from a plague that could wipe out a single major food supply crop.
A lot of framers in Western Canada are using Permaculture principles to remove reliance on chemicals and a more diverse crop. Some of these techniques are actually old farming methods.
5000 tonnes of fruit and nuts annually on 1.1 acres? It's hard to believe that you're really producing an average of 230 lb of food per square foot every year. Also, you said he planted on 2 hectares but then said his food forest was 1.1 acres. Why?
When something sounds to good to be true, it usually isn't true. How much as I love the idea, there is no way you can keep removing food/fruit/vegatables/whatever from a piece land without complementing the nutrients that were taken from it. There's no such thing as free energy, no endless source of energy, nor an endless source of nutrients. It HAS to come from somewhere, right?
Plus the main thing, grains store well over long periods without much cost. And fresh produce needs refrigeration to last a few weeks during shipping and storing
I *love* permaculture and food forests, and I think we need MUCH more of what's in this video. But I find there's always a chasm between the vague claims of most permaculture advocates (of which I consider myself one) and the extremely pragmatic approach of conventional agriculture. If you're content to simply buy an acre here and there and convert it to a food forest, fine. But if you want to convince people this is the revolutionary change we need, you're going to have to start engaging with hard numbers, logistics, and trade-offs. Maybe that's happening with this initiative and this video is only meant to generate excitement. But overall, I wish there was more focus on concrete data collection and analysis. Simply talking about biodiversity and showing some "plant samples" to ostensibly prove forest soil is better than field soil isn't going to cut it. Food forests and permaculture ARE an important way forward in the climate crisis. But we need more people to think like scientists about this and fewer people thinking like motivational speakers.
@@adamsmit2162 I have been doing a lot of reading about this topic, especially the programs that have grown (pun intended) from Australia. They have the research and data.
@@susanperry4177 I don't doubt it. I'm saying I want to see it. I'm currently taking a permaculture design course, and while I appreciate the large focus on principles and ethics, I feel that permaculture needs to be brought into an era where the science stops playing second fiddle to the "inspiration."
@@adamsmit2162 Wouter van Eck, the owner of this food forest has plenty of articles to read about his food forest, potential productivity compared to conventional agriculture, etc
Excellent video!! Thank you for posting and getting the word out on the concept of food forests. It really makes so much more sense than the way I was taught when I studied Ag. That was decades ago and even then there were whispers of moving away from the conventional methods. What was the norm back then was to completely sterilize the soil by overuse of chemicals and try to make up for it by...you guessed it...using even more chemicals!! Great marketing scheme, it made many people wealthy, but at tremendous cost to the families that lived on the farms. Since the chemicals were sold on credit, when the family became devasted due to chemical caused deaths, the chemical company ended up with the farms. Now, they are one of the biggest landholders in the USA. If only we would have had the Food Forest method of farming from the beginning, we could have avoided all that destruction. Good thing that farm land heals quickly once we start using better practices. It's a long way back but at least now we have found the right road.
In the old mixed farming with crop rotation system, didn't we have a commercially viable version of permaculture? Modern ideas and politics, along with urbanisation for work put paid to that. I'm 60. My uncle took over his father's mixed farm in the early 1960s. Due to new government regulations and a falling rural population, he found his best option was to convert to a dairy farm. None of my cousins wanted to take over the farm due to both hugely increasing red tape and rising costs. My uncle worked 7 days a week and loved his life. Ill health forced him into retirement. Local co-ops have been replaced by corporate business practices, to the detriment of our farmers. A new approach is needed all round.
@@LeafofLifeWorld Well not only 'grain'. Almost every mono culture crop has his 'machine' to help gathering. More farming by hand. In my European country that means importing seasonal labour from poorer countries. Best add a living space with basic human facilities in the ground plan of the forest.
it will be more expensive then the current system , seeing as you can't get harvesters or other machinery in there so you need to hire many people to handpick everything. and that increases the overhead. what now is done by a farmer and his son for 5 hectares a day will now come down to 200 people for 3 hectares a day.
it's not the fertilizer or pesticides cost its the amount of work put in to sow and harvest the food which will be orders of magnitude higher than on a regular field. As much as i love the idea of fresh locally produced food with zero pesticides nor fertilizer .. unless i see those foods for an affordable price in the shelfs .. it's just a hyped idea
Specifics, please! This' fantasy-talk without plant names, numbers of plants yield quantities, man hours of labor, market value of crops, etc. Thanks for the attractive feel-good video.
Yes, yes, we know the Netherlands are a paradise, and they will plan their way into a peaceful, productive world through outlawing all of the agricultural practices that have led to abundant food supplies in the West today.
🌳Support our on the ground regenerative projects: www.leafoflife.world
Good work. Bill Mollison would be proud to see his ideas becoming mainstream.
👍💪✌
Permaculture is something I learned about 2 years ago so I planted fruit trees, shrubs and still need to add more to it, BUT I just actually learned about something that has me even more excited then permaculture and that is Electroculture which is a BIG WOW when you learn this!!!
@@rootsinkarst8433 I have not seen van Eck take any credit for permaculture ideas, and so far as I have seen he very much acknowledges the inspirations and prior work he is building on. It’s just an oversight in this Leaf of Life documentary *about* his project to get these ideas implemented in national and EU policy, that doesn’t (yet!) make the distinction as clear as it should have been. @@LeafofLifeWorld this is excellent content in every other way. Could you do a part 2 where you make clear the exciting contribution van Eck’s work is making that is distinct from and builds on all of the progress that has been made in permaculture projects and food forests around the world? Kudos on synthesizing these complex issues into such a short tight message so it gets in front of many more people.
Indigenous people are the originators of this plan. Not some Dutch dude. We should be looking to Indigenous culture for guidance in many aspects of our lives. If Australia had listened to the Indigenous there would be none of the huge fires affecting them now.
It’s unfortunate that when it’s a white dude all of a sudden people listen?
This was also a concept devised by Bill Mollison at the University of Tasmania in 1978. He called it Permaculture & it is still used in different counties around the world.
Right. Food forests have been creating miracles all over the world for decades.
I came down to the comments to make this point; glad you beat me to it. I'm also glad this concept is spreading. Peter Andrews in Australia is another person to research. I hope all of us adopt this.
Let us not forget David Holmgren the other half of the team that devised Permaculture.
Geoff Lawson was taught by Mollison. He has a good project in the desert near Jordan.
Morag Gamble is another permaculuturist teaching others in this technique.
The more the better.
Lawton.
I did similar to this in my garden in the UK over the last few years. I have many varieties of fruit trees and shrubs, which yield a lot of fruit, every year. The wildlife that visits our garden is spectacular.
Fruit is sugar and largely devoid of protein. It may constitute a small portion of a healthy person's diet. And for those with metabolic syndrome, fruit, like all sugar should be avoided.
Before creating these forests we have to take care that our 'WEF friends' don't convert all of the Netherlands into 1 big housing estate!!
💯👍
And our WEF friends will soon probably require a permit for anything self-grown so that they don't miss out on their clip of the profits.
Baer Uuttehei
I don't hear anyone saying it has to happen in the Netherlands, their dream mega city may have been set back by the election of those who oppose it but the dream still lives on in the EU. Just watched a video from Spain where it's claimed the Spanish Govt. is annoyed because their largest building company is relocating their HQ to the Netherlands, and I doubt they did that just to enjoy a wetter climate.
@@wjf0ne forget about the electionwin of the 'opposing party': that is just a charade! The party with initials BBB (what does that remind you of?) is the product of an advertisement agency that is entangled with Monsanto (Round Up/Glyphosat). The party voted, already before the elections, alongside the governing parties. So nothing new there!
Unfortunately true.
The biggest downside is that it isn't compatible with current food production chains. One advantage that wasn't mentioned would be that it doesn't require flat land, it can be done on hillsides or in ravines. this type of farming would be ideal in places where tractors cannot go and maybe you want to prevent mudslides, fires or floods.
Not a downside.. lol
It's the CHAINS that destroy everything. How much is needed just for McDonalds!!!???
I don't eat out side my kitchen much, so let's just get rid of CHAIN PRODUCTION,,, BY NOT CONSUMING IT.
if the Budweiser situation didn't show you how to vote with your money, God help you..
HE is helping me create my own nutrition.
Silvopastoralism is a great Holistic Land Management strategy. Some of the largest stands of old growth forest anywhere in America is in the crosstimbers ecoregions of Texas, because it’s mostly rough; rocky land and prairie that isn’t useful for much besides running livestock or hunting. The forests aren’t usually taller than 30-40 feet there and the trees don’t have much commercial value, despite the diversity. Intensive rotational grazing on better land, or extensive agriculture elsewhere seems like it will be a bigger part of agroecology going forth. It would be cool to see more people utilizing intermittent grazing, or mobbing, even with other people’s livestock, in the future. I’ve had some great results with ‘hoof cultivation’ and horses for seeding hay pastures, but they have giant spades for feet!
@@candygarfield1479 Please have some courtesy and consider people who are not yourself.
@@candygarfield1479 Wrong kind of chains.
Not much talk about what food is actually produced and grown.
In theory it sounds great, but as many have already stated it would be a nightmare to harvest these forests.
Jobs jobs jobs
@@nerlind If you need a ton of people it won't be financially feasable
@@DenniskuhhNL Yes, the finances do matter. There is savings in input though and right now we are only speaking through our assumptions in general terms. A closer look at the details would reveal the bottom line. I simply commented because monoculture has so many problems that we are not aware of and it is simply not working when we look at the long term effects. This is in real terms, not theory. Just saying let us not discount something outright without looking deeper into it.
@@nerlind oh I'm all for this idea.
I just don't see an easy way of automizing harvestation of randomly growing forests.
You just can't beat the modern harvesting techniques with a bunch of workers combing through a forest with a bucket.
Sure, those forest grown products are more healthy, but you need A LOT of workers & manhours to get the same yield.
Because of that, products would get signifactly more expensive which would harm our living standard.
Also, farmers can no longer mass produce products that people actually want.
We would be dependent on what the forest offers us, which would cause scarcity for products people want,
and leftover waste for all others. Creating more segregation between the poor and the rich.
nightmare? sounds a lot nicer to pick fruits and nuts there than sitting in a cubicle 9-5 every single day... it would be healther for you too... but of course you would have less time drewling mindlessly infront of the TV...
For anyone who has learned about Permaculture this is a bit unnecessarily obscure... I thought there was some kind of new discovery, but food forests are already a well known approach to most people who know about agriculture. Admittedly I think what Wouter van Eck is doing is very interesting, largely because he's kept details of his yields, which helps to prove that food forestry can compete with industrial ag. But you miss out a key aspect which is that we all need to adapt our DIET... currently a huge proportion of calories we eat come entirely from wheat, rice and corn, whereas a food forest produces a diversity of food crops. So to make use of them we need behavioural change interventions to encourage people to adapt, to learn how to cook with these foods and to enjoy them.
nicely put: Most Americans only eat "food products". They insist on food products even in the evidence that 75% of their own deaths are caused by diet (I made that up but you get the idea) Americans prefer to consume their pills and potions. Maybe we have to accept permaculture is optimal in countries where people aren't addicted to food products? I live in Mexico and still have but an occasional success with "converts"
Wheat, rice and corn all lead to a myriad of health problems, people would do well to consider abandoning the SAD and exploring better, healthier options.
Thank you, Cleona,
You have answered one of my (Western European) questions; namely: "What about wheat (for bread, pasta and so on) and potatoes (for everything!)?" Answer: "Change your diet!" (We have only had potatoes here for about 500 years.)
Best wishes, Luke
the yield maybe competative with indrustrial aggriculture but these forrest are was more labor intensive to harvest
People should eat a KETO DIET.
As a Dutchie, I would not call it a Dutch plan. The idea of food forrest is not really widely adapted yet besides some very local places.
Except for all the rain-forrest that humans havn't entirely taken over yet. Since it is the normal state of many forrests.
Het heet het Nederlandse plan omdat het hier bedacht was, niet omdat het hier zo veel toegepast wordt ;-)
@@ShieTar_ no doubt humans need to keep doing better... but when those in power keep reminding us that there are too many people, they mean its you and me.. we are the too many people. .
No one wants to destroy the planet. . But there are other solutions than starving us all...
@@pieterveenders9793 Het is eerder al toegepast door andere volkeren, o.a. in India. Andrew Millison op youtube laat dit tot in details zien en interviewt de mensen die het hebben gedaan daar. Het een naam geven, betekent niet dat we de uitvinders/bedenkers zijn.
Food forests are more productive as a collective of calories produced than standard agriculture, but harder to make a living doing it because of the stretched out tasks on the farm. It's also harder to make mortgage payments with it
I am from the Netherlands, and i have never heard of this. So i think this short film makes it a lot bigger than it is.
Zijn er mee bezig ,boere moet weg😢
Because it is a fun garden, but not a real sollution on "how to feed everybody a good, solid diet, year round".
It is a nice experment in "how to get by without pesitcides and how to optimally combine pieces of nature/semi-edible plants/ to make something that is usefull for survival" but it will not save the "worldhunger/overpopulation-problem" or even get us out of our current predicament where we need to step up production, but also use less pesticides, cut down on nitrogene and CO2 emissions.
We are a super-tiny country and almost outproduce something as large as the combined USA... that does not happen for free, we are making a mess in the process.
I am from the Netherlands as well, work in a food forest and ampart of the food forest network. I can promise you that they are popping up everywhere since the last 2/3 years, and because it's so recent, that's probably the reason why you haven't heard of it. You'll hear about this a lot more in the upcoming years
Moet je misschien eens radio luisteren of tv kijken, dit is al jaren geleden voorbijgekomen bij verscheidene nieuws zenders.
@@ekd5213 VEE boeren moeten weg, althans een hoop daarvan. wanneer snappen de mensen nou eens, dat we de groene boeren heel graag willen houden, en dat er juist meer ruimte en subsidei vrij komt om de groente en fruit telers zo veel mogelijk te steunen om future proof te worden. we produceren te veel vlees en vee voer ten kosten van ons millieu, onze water kwaliteit en de vruchtbaarheid van onze grond. tijd voor modernisering en elke dag een biefstukje is echt niet meer nodig vandaag de dag.
"170,000 hectares converted to food forest can feed 1 million people". Great. How about the other 16 million Dutch folks and hundreds of millions of people outside the Netherlands who currently eat Dutch grown and produced food?
Save the Dutch FARMS AND FARMERS!
I've been doing a micro version of this in my backyard for over 15years now only two miles from a major American city. It's very hilly where I live, so we incorporate bioswales to slow and collect the rain water when it flows. It's awesome and we have crops coming up every year that we didn't even plant!
@user-hi3um6dh1y Why bother planning ? You just have to select crops that naturally grows in your garden.
And you rely on this totally as your source of food.
No, it's supplemental.
@@jondoe5536 That's fantastic&if u can be as self sufficient as possible,which means less reliance that has to be a good thing(if only frm a personal state of mind)
And it's got to be more economical! And I hope ur managing to sell some of ur produce on the side(farmers market& like)
Thanks for your input. I want to try it.
I own a large area of land and leave 20% of the property in native conditions. When Dad was alive he donated 300 acres of land to conservation. I go there from time to time just to see how big the tree's actually get in the wild. I do wish we still had the giant Chestnut trees,but a imported insect killed them all.
Can you elaborate what the imported insects are? This is a new concept to me. How did the insects kill the trees?
@@satheeshragothamanrao439 ,it was a wood bore bettle There's a Utube video about it Killing of the Chestnut of Appalachia.
@@jaymartin4166 How sad and tragic
Yes, I love that you shared this comment. Our farm has retired many sections of land to regeneration. Areas that are not great for commercial agriculture. Trees are planted in these sections every year. Some 25 000 trees now planted over 20 years. And so many more can be planted..... I suspect now the land has had enough rest and could take in different species of trees now. Thank you for this. Gives us hope
Can i introduce you to viktor schauberger. He wrote lots of valuable books on conservation.
The capabilities of a country that does not primarily fund an industrial war complex is endless.
100%
This is one man's initiative though. And the US there's a lot more to it that military spending. Even if the US had spent 1.6% GDP on the military as the Netherlands did pre-covid (it's up now), it still would have had an overall 2.6% budget deficit. And unlike the Netherlands, still have shitty infrastructure and public transportation, sub-par education and no universal healthcare. The US needs a major overhaul, but it's not coming any time soon. But people can start food forests alone or in groups though.
@@MrMezmerized The problem of coercive govt. forced on all by popular demand is worldwide. If just one (1) country started a govt. based on choice, not violence and threats, it would be as a beacon of freedom to all and therefore it would be attacked by the United Nations before people could learn they self-enslave when they support the present worldwide political paradigm.
Holland is NATO member and that on its own says it all.
@@trystwithdestiny100 I had no idea. Thanks for the information.
Corrections: it’s “The Netherlands, also known as Holland”.
One thing not mentioned, but very important: How much time does it take to harvest the crops? Way more then harvesting with machines. It's very labour intensive. Something we already have a big problem with. It's not going to work on large scales.
Monoculture is a flaming disaster. Permaculture is another name for this. Lots of people have been doing this for years. Geoff Lawton has a lot on youtube about it. Farming in this manner requires zero external input. It works off of what nature does better than suits behind desks do. The problem with too many people is that they're incapable thinking their way through the dynamics involved in farming. They foolishly believe you toss sees on the ground and they grow then you pick. That is why centrally controlled agriculture of any sort especially the WEF version always results in abject failure and finger pointing. It's a lesson nobody seems to learn.
@@richardhawkins2248 Some crops don't care about being on the same ground for decades. And for the rest, we rotate. One year it's potato's, next year it wheat and then it's carrots. Every harvest leaves plantwaste that will be plowed into the ground to fertilize the next growth.
@@richardhawkins2248 You didn't aswer my question on how to organize harvesting. Not to mention storage. You can't harvest all year round. A lot of crops, fruits and nuts can only be harvest in a short period of time. You need people for this. And worse, you need those people everywhere at the same time. We don't have that many people (let alone people who are willing). There is your biggest problem.
The more food forests the better. It is probably one of the most ancient human ideas, although permaculture gave it another life.
Permaculture is the modern human name for how nature works since the beginning of times
@@MrPoillekewell, yes and no. We are student's of nature but the "culture" part is for human conscious choices according to knowledge based on observation of natural ecosystems. Nature does not create a geodesic dome greenhouse or a compost toilet and you don't use the name permaculture for a wild rainforest or an ocean reef system. But you can use knowledge about how reef and rainforest work to improve the ecosystem of your garden - and it is fair to name that a permaculture approach.
@@ludwikawykurz4345 damn, you gotme, as a newbie i thought it was that way, lol. As i thought the first agriculture came from crops found in a food forest and planted as a monoculture...
Thanks for the lesson :)
also remember to poop in them.
give the nutrients back
@@rgw5991 that's exactly one of my official mottos "shit happens - use it as a manure" :P
In Canada, we call it going to the wilderness because if you know where to look in Canada, you’ll find wild berry bushes already growing you’ll find hazelnuts bushes you’ll find fruit trees, strawberry patches, you name it you can find it in the Canadian wilderness provided it grows in our climate But one word of caution, black bears and grizzly bears likes to grazing in these areas so you might become food to
It's okay, Justin wants you all herded into cities...
nice!
Nice for you Canadian, but how is that going to help me here in NL?
@@neckreth move to Canada and if you have socialist ideas leaving them their
Thanks for the comment DUH.....try living on GRUB HAMBURGERS sport !! right now you can eat anthing you want..but what if you only had food made up of BUGS ..FUBAR FUBAR FUBAR !
Growing food is one side of the medal. Harvesting the other side. I see a problem: harvesting in a food forest requires a lot of manual labor. I think it is good for producing some types of food but not for all food. E.g. grain is needed in huge amounts of quantity. Even if a food forest can produce so much grain, harvesting will be impossible, because the machines cannot be used.
That's what I thought
This isnt supposed to be harvested by 1 man, to feed a 100.
It is supposed to be harvested by a 100 people that are going to eat it themself.
@@jankaas2760 How would that work for cities like - London - with millions of inhabitants and no easy access to such land even if such woodland existed. If they all of them had to drive say 20mile out of the city to access the land and then 'pick their food' surely that would lead to more pollution not less. In modern households where both/all adults work, often long hours, where would they find the time to do this. What happens if I arrive and find 'no suitable food' left? how is pricing agreed? Looks like a great small scale solution in rural communities, but I can't see it being viable more widely.
Grain is only needed in such large quantities to feed animals.
@@johnfowler4820 solution - reduce the livestock stack.
It can't be commercialized because it can't be mechanized. It would work great for rural villages and towns but not for cities.
Holland is not known as the Netherlands for the same reason Surrey is not know as the UK.
It's a region.
Permaculture is spreading slowly around the world. I hope to see a lot of it in urban settings, I'd sure like to see it in my area, and am working toward it in my small piece of property on the west coast of the U.S.
We’re hoping to start a permaculture site as well. For now, we have our balcony garden.
Years ago most homes had a small garden which they grew there own food not difficult let’s go back
@@mountaingardening it's still
Its still permaculture even if it is just on your balcony. Well done, and best wishes once you get some land.
CUCKOO WHACKO HERE FOLKS... eats bugs, wants government to take care of her too..
I think this is a great plan....
but it will never be implemented in a top-down method due to the huge lobbying bank rolls funded by pharmaceuticals and agricultural industries. Keep in mind that Bayer also owns Monsato, so they are financially incentivized to keep the world on an inflammatory diet with a heavy grain dependency.
@Садоводство so true!
Can you imagine if the state of Iowa was a food forest rather than just fields of endless corn?
That would be beautiful 😍
Iowa in particular is such a travesty. We have a lot of cropland in Michigan but at least there are forests off in the distance. Farmland does degrade quite quickly over time. Many old abandoned farms become scrub forests. Scientists thought it would take a century or more to become a full natural forest. But if we are smart, and bring in compost and woodchip mulch to degraded soil, and fell some of the dying older trees, newer healthier trees shoot up. Fell & mulch weak trees and plant more of the varieties you want, keeping only the healthiest. 100 years can be compressed to 15 or 20 years.
From an Iowa resident. Iowa has not been forested since at least before the last glacial period. Most of northern Iowa was bogs and swamps. There are currently more trees in Iowa then at any time in the last 20,000 years. It is true that modern agriculture produces dead dirt not living soil. It is also true that grass captures more co2 then trees do over their lifespans.
@@Nphen thats what I say, invest all our reaources for the next five years and rejuvenate the millions of acres of land
@@Nphen In Iowa you won't find abandoned farms. There might be a few dormant farms, but that is usually for legal reasons such as inheritance litigation. Occasionally there is land willed to the state as nature reserves. One such nature reserve near me went from corn field to 50 foot dense trees composed of maple, white oak, walnut, cherry, and locust in 50 years. Our farm ground should have been better cared for, true, but still has some of the highest organic matter content for farmed ground in the nation. I don't doubt your sincerity, but you really need to select your sources better.
We did this in North and South America, a long time ago. After European diseases wiped out most of our population over the first couple hundred years after contact, we lost our knowledge of horticulture, and devolved into hunter/gatherers. We have since rediscovered our heritage, and its nice to see that it has had a positive impact on the Europeans, even if it did take a few more hundred years and a misanthropic Australian in order to catch on.
So why are they trying to take farms away from farmers? So that other government farmers can farm the land? Something else is going on.
Sounds great, however without details of what is actually grown its difficult to say how good this actually is. I would like full details of what is grown in this food forest, specifically the vegetables grown.
Be proactive and do your research
There are no details because there are no harvests worth mentioning. Did you crunch the numbers? 5,000 tons of harvest from how many square meters? This is a fairy-tale!
Always the calculating mind, isn't it? The fact that no chemicals are involved, and wildlife thrives in this food forest, offers lasting security into the future.
While the mono culture farming ends 1 day, with the soil entirely lifeless.
No calculating of yield anymore, just dead soil.
@@devonseamoor This of course justifies lying with absurd numbers.
Sounds like going back in time, living in jungles without any mechanization.
How do you harvest your produce consistently in that mess? Only by hand?
How about building community along with the food forest? Every community, their own food forest. Possibilities✨✌
@@ZANAHEALING literally medieval infrastructure, that you're proposing.
@@albertolopezadrados8282 Exactly, hope that the unauthorized cutting of hazel won't be punishable by death just like then.
My thoughts exactly. Only very skilled and knowledgeable people must be involved in the process. This is going to be quite a task, as the whole paradigm would need to shift for it to work.
It's a sincere question. I know there are farms that are actually doing this, I'm just asking how does it work in terms of logistics. Again, is it all just done by hand?
Sounds great, like a lot of fairy tales do 😉.
You’d make the story far easier to believe giving some numbers illustrating how much of what crops those two hectares of food forest are actually producing
Also ... a description of how all these different food types would be harvested from wild woodland (because it would be tough labour, and time consuming).
Then there is packaging, transport, and retail (before it goes off).
Neither described was the battle of life, where insects place their eggs in fruit (where they grow, before exiting the fruit).
I can cut out the bad bits in fruit, but most people would want fruit to be undamaged.
For the most part these forests will need to be hand picked. I only see how this will decrease the overall food supply, but maybe that is the point.
Pro corporation, huh?
@@Caged63Man ?
Timestamp 4.09 ....5000 tons of fruit and nuts annually...😅🤣😂
5000 tonnes of produce from such a small plot of land?? I'm assuming that's a typo!
A necessity!
No time to lose!
This can never work for high output industrial farming. The logistics of harvesting eliminates profitability except at small business level
The whole reason the worlds large scale farms are the way they are is so not everyone has to be a farmer. With food forests many more people would have to be farmers since there is not a way to mass harvest these more natural food forests. Works well for small scale like homesteads though.
Mass harvest is an illusion it only works with grain crops, most fruit and veg farms use human hands for harvesting. Often they are casual or seasonal workers many 'illegal' immigrants, under paid, overworked and bad working conditions, exposure to heat, since no shade on moncultures and exposure to chemicals. The work they would do in a food forest would be much more pleasant compared to a big agricultural farm.
@@LeafofLifeWorld Besides fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers, pretty much everything can be mass harvested. Some examples are
Potato
Wheat
Corn
Rice
Soybeans
Rapeseed
Sugar cane
Cotton
Alfalfa
Clover
Wouldn't call it an illusion by any stretch when those are big food staples. But yes, if such a "food forest" could be laid out in such a way as to allow access to some smaller machinery meant for transport, it could be a viable alternative for vegetable and fruit production; there still remains one problem though, and that is the impact of nature on the produce. People don't want damaged goods, i.e. fruits damaged because they were used for insect reproduction and similar things you wouldn't find in the "not quite sterile but not far off" conditions you find in monoculture.
Might well be a more pleasant working condition, though the pay might have to be adjusted downwards to account for lower productivity per worker (longer travel to drop off goods, wilder patterns that require more thought, compared to nice uniform accessible fruit/vegs). I don't see a reason illegal immigrants or other people with little recourse to abuse would not be used for "food forest" harvesting. That's a different topic and I feel is unrelated.
@@LeafofLifeWorld So potatoes are grain crops now?
In Brazil Ernest Goetsch did the same in a much larger scale, and became recognized by the syntropic agriculture.
We have so much to learn from him
I have been trying to be self sufficient for 30 years without success in Australia. My soil is poor, the tall gum trees take all the nutrients, then we have dought, then floods, then fires, then insects and animals eating everything and digging them up. However, the place looks beautiful and we have created a bird sanctuary and a pleasant place to live. The food still comes from the nearest shops.. Everywhere is different and there is no plan that works well in every place without total dedication and back breaking work from what I have seen. And even then there is no food growing naturally here. Good luck.
Funny you should have posted this...The You Tube last vid I watched was 'A Literal Oasis - Syntropic Agroforestry at Lightening Ridge, NSW, Australia'. Found the reference to the 'literal oasis' slightly misleading, but otherwise found it very informative. Hope you find it helpful, and Good Luck to you too!
Growing the food is one thing, but harvesting it is another. This seems like it would take way too much manpower to harvest for it to be of much practical use in a larger scale.
This is how our aboriginal ancestors tailored their landscapes to their own needs. The ‘conquerors’ of these lands did not know how to value what they conquered, believing (wrongly) that the natives were naive and unsophisticated, living like animals. They had systems for allowing certain plants that they used to thrive. Now, the real question is: can we wrest enough arable land from corporate farming interests to make this transition possible?
You asked the right question.
The right question is will it really feed the world.
I have just two questions about economics of such an endeavor. How you manage to harvest different plants in different seasons? In addition even if the soil could provide for a better growth of plants how will they compete for the sunlight with trees?
Your intelligent questions and understanding of reality is not suitable for the already old "idea" presented here. :)
@@pierrenilsson6189 Nowadays we fear intelligent questions more than anything in the world :-))))
The Biggest Little Farm did a great job building a 'farm forest' like this from dead soil in only 7 years but also used animals. They are still doing very well years later.
Just loved the movie!
Knowledge and truth are always targets for evil politicians 🤔😒🦠
The efficiencies of modern agriculture aren't gained from total edible products by weight per acre, but largely from specialization. Harvesting hundreds of crops from food forests and processing the products for long-term storage would require orders of magnitude more knowledge and skill than processing a single product.
I love Food Forests, but I think 1 acre won't produce 5,000 tons of anything. Did I hear that wrong?
No,you heard correct...timestamp 4.09 ..
"5000 tons of fruit and nuts annually" ...😅🤣😂
I think there is something important missing from this video. I listened to a video from Wouter van Eck a while ago. He explained his version of the food forest and how it needs to be rational ie easy to harvest and scalable. So while it is building on an idea from permaculture it is something a little different.
Thank you for pointint that out! Yes, it would have been nice to have had that in the video, as that would have given it some substance that it was lacking imo. There are so many videos already about how fantastic permaculture is (and it is), but so little about the important transition from small idealists to methods and organizations for actually feeding the masses.
"to harvest and scalable". That's what I was looking for in the comments. It does not matter if it produces x-times more food as the farmer next door.
How do you get the food out of this 'jungle'? :)
@@GerritDeSmedt Wouter van Eck explains this in his TH-cam video 'Food Forests Future Role ; Feeding the World?!' He explains the difference between a 'romantic' food forest ie a jungle and a rational one. I imagine it is the rational version which he presented to the government for the Dutch Plan!
@@peasinourthyme5722 I agree that permaculture is great and I think the more people adopt in either wholly or partially the better. I think all food forests have so much potential, whether 'romantic' or the 'rational' version.
@@ronamcintosh8762 yes, i believe food forest really is the way go, and we need the whole spectrum from romantic to rational. We also need i think to accept a different agricultural economical model where a lot more people are working there than currently. (In the sc developed world)
This is neat! My dad always said a lot of farm land was worn out and if they didn't use a bunch of fertilizers on it they wouldn't be able to grow anything. I live in the US and we could certainly use something like this to help get our soils healthy again and help our environment and people to be well. Thankyou!
Check out regenerativ agriculture. And check out holistic grazing management. Both larger scale solutions to our biodiversity and climate crisis
Regenerative ag will help with that.
The EU's Common Agricultural Policy leaves fields fallow for this exact reason.
Also check out dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web. As a leading microbiologist in the US she developed a compost based method to regenerate degraded soils, that can be adopted by large scale agriculture.
Very nice as a private enterprise (Van Eck is selling food forest courses for more than €500 per person) but it is impossible to feed a population with this concept. Harvesting will be way too expensive.
How is this sustainable without predators? If there’s predators, how can we harvest? Robots?
I had heard of the food forest concept a few years ago and thought it was an amazing idea, so I created my own food forest and I love it. My goal is to do food preservation from my excess produce. Self-sufficiency and community trade are invaluable. I am in full support of this!
Try and think of a politician planting a food forest and giving lip service to working it
I am thinking of growing a very small food forest in my backyard. What I wonder about is how much time it takes every day after things are planted. Is it more for people with plenty of spare time?
@@tnijoo5109 just let it grow buddy, and harvest what yo uneed when you need it.
As a hobby yes, I have a food garden myself. To feed the world? Especially the poor? no, won't work at all
It will be hardly impossible to become or continue to be the 2nd largest food producer of the world with food forests. Food needs to be hand picked so it will only work on a small scale or many, many small farms. This also does not consider that the Netherlands is one of the biggest milk producers of the world and also does not consider meat production. If every Dutch person would do this in their backyard it would be great. But most people don't even have a backyard. Let alone one that is big enough to feed them. This is very idealistic way of thinking and not realistic for feeding the world.
5000 tons annually? Seriously?
Lies !
I am also a Farmer, think it's a good idea. The question is how much Fruit I can sell in €, some times is isn't easy to find buyers for organic fruits, or is it just a new subvention game. And right now in Holland many conventional Farmers are on riot, because they forced to give up there kind of Farming.
please send your questions to leafoflifefilms@gmail.com
Good to be sceptical. Need evidence not just good intentions
Is this why they're forcing the Dutch farmers from their land or is there another reason?
The issue is that this big piece of land is barely enough to supply food for 1 family while the professional farmers have more production. If everyone would use this low yield farming, 100% of the country would need to be used as farmland as we get more and more people (e.g. from immigration) to feed thus making this kind of farming for the few only. Luckily, BBB has grown faster and more than this type of farming so that we probably end up with more effective means of feeding the people and cost effective foods (i.e. vegetables and meet).
I believe costs are lower but does it really yield more product? Also, isn't it way to labor intensive to harvest all fruits and vegetables?
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of improving biodiversity while at the same time growing crops and decreasing the amount of nitrogen in the soil and water. Though I'm not shure this is feasable at a larger scale. At least not in a heavily intensified agricultural industry like the Netherlands.
we don't lack people... people can do meaningful jobs of collecting food in food forests... or the same people can do pseudojobs shuffling paper in an officer, while getting stressed over pretending to be really busy and important, trying to justify their position so they don't get fired... one is sustainable... one is useless...
@@LiLBitsDK
I expect you to show up and do this manual labour for half a living wage lol. (Half because nobody would be able to afford the full price)
Social engineering geniuses have killed millions of people in the past.
@@LiLBitsDK Amen to that, I was about to comment the same thing.
Right or wrong, I think this is the only alternative we have in the long run.....
Seems to me that it’s ideal for enabling communities to source their own local food. Even if it’s not practical as a widely used way of agriculture, it would be great for smaller towns or even larger cities to support themselves by a local agricultural source. I live in Houston, Tx and I could see the farmland surrounding Houston being changed to this as a way of an almost complete source of produce. This would cut down on importing so much from other places. I’m sure there is more to this than was in this video but it seems like a good idea to me.
The Netherlands does it again! So proud of my heritage.
Me too. Very proud to be dutch.
I find this a very interesting principle and would definitely want to know more about it. But I do have some doubts about the claims and wonder how certain things are handled.
For example:
1. With so many different crops, how are they individually harvested? With all crops next to each other and overlapping, the harvest must be very labour intensive as there is no space for mechanical harvesters.
2. The yield will be small per crop because there is only a small amount of that crop. Economies of scale will be hard to accomplish.
3. This might work for some crops, but for many others it will not be possible (e.g. grains)
4. how to deal with fungus, bacteria and insects that want to eat the crops? I imagine different fungi will affect different crops. With everything so close, any pesticide or poison will also touch crops that are not affected by that specific fungus/bacteria.
5. Not all crops are as popular by the population. Can the more popular crops also be grown in this context or only certain specific ones?
6. The claim that this grants bigger yields than traditional farming is hard to believe as traditional farming does everything to get an optimal yield for one product. Every millimeter of space is used for an optimal crop yield. But if so, how is this measured?
But, this does sound very interesting and i would love to see a much smaller example than this (for people with only a small patch of land).
small area, small crop... large food forest, large crop... harvest and eat what is in season... try to get away from the "we need big machines to harvest this, else it isn't efficient" those thoughts are what brought us into the trouble we are in
@@LiLBitsDK this means everyone has to live close to the crop to be able to harvest it, and a lot are needed to harvest a lot. Those people won't be able to do much else as this will be very time consuming. You are basically foraging not farming. You will not be producing enough excess to feed those in cities, so they have to move out of the cities to where they can forage for themselves, whilst not spending time on their normal job.
As for eating foods in season, that's what mainly happened when I was a kid, but you still had farms growing the stuff. And you need food through the winter when nothing grows so you need to produce enough to supply the population through the winter. Which is possibly the root of the "western" profit motive ie you must produce more than you need now as you will need it later in winter. So just producing a little and varied crop is fine for a handful of people, but it isn't practical for a large population. The last time the majority survived mainly on similar foraging in Europe was probably before the bronze age. Since farming began it has allowed society and population to grow.
@@crabby7668 so you live close to your work now? define close? even to this day there are "day laborers" that travel around the countries to harvest whatever is in season in the various areas... not hard
and don't waste my time if you don't know the difference of forage and forest farming...
forage = you try to find stuff
farming = you harvest the stuff because you know where it is
@@LiLBitsDK if this were to be done as a replacement for traditional farming as some (you?) are positing, then everyone would need time to do their farming, which would detract from their normal activities. How many can spend 8 hours at work and then spend multiple hours farming? Not many I would bet, particular if farming properly. Farming is not an easy job, particularly on a commercial scale.
Yes there are day rate workers who travel round real farms harvesting crops, usually for money. That means that the farm has to produce enough excess to sell to be able to pay them. In this theoretical scenario it still has to be enough to feed them and their families or they are going to be back home doing their own forest farming and not available to work for someone else. If you run it as a commune then people need to live close to it or they have an even worse problem with available time.
There seems to be different ideas on how this is supposed to operate ie either commercially or as a commune/small holding type of operation. I severely doubt whether the productivity would be anywhere enough to run commercially on a large scale ie feeding the general population., rather than just selling some mushrooms to a local restaurant. As a private small holding or commune it has its merits, but people would still have to spend a lot of their time on it. If it produced much more product than normal farming as claimed, it would be highly unlikely that traditional farming would have evolved away from it the way it has.
Also planting non woodland crops isn't likely to work very well because the trees will block the light that the crops need. Woodland products tend to grow where they want to, so either you have to make them grow where you want them to, which will tend to micro monoculture because it's easier for you to have one type of plant all together, or you run a natural woodland where everything is all over the shop. If the latter then it is akin to foraging. Yes you know where the trees or bushes are but you don't necessarily know how much crop and when is best to harvest (usually in dribs and drabs) unless you spend a lot of time in the forest observing the crops.
I suspect many people are viewing this as a if it were a hobby rather than a serious method of feeding the population. That is doubly so if you have to produce enough to keep the population fed over winter.
A slight adjustment to your definition of farming. "Harvesting the crop because you know where it is" and the essential point" because you put it there in the first place"
@@crabby7668 no they wouldn't... guess you have never worked with farming or have any clue about... atleast that is the vibe I get from you... I have worked with various sorts of farming for 30 years... 1 person working with farming with food forests can feed a LOT more than one person... will it take more people than now? yes... will that be bad? no... is there tons of useless pseudojobs now? yes... can those people doing useless stuff produce food? yes...
but to be honest I don't care... as long as I can produce my own food then you can starve when they ban all the farming as they are doing now... enjoy your grubs and printed meats and tofu crap...
TLDR: Some guy planted a garden
Support Dutch farmers!
The main point here is that food forests as well as permaculture, organic/biological agriculture is very labour intensive. Meaning much less production per farmer. Meaning if introduced large scale you need many more farmers but also the price of food will increase substantially.
yeah, where's the BEEF!
@@marychristenson3913 you can combine food forests with grasslands/wetlands with cattle on... instead of sloppy feedlots... it won't be as intensive but the quality will be way better + healthy for the nature instead of toxic sludge knee deep on the animals
@@marychristenson3913 between your ears
What proof do you have that food forests need Alot of work? Most systems like this look after themselves as they create an ecosystem.
I knew you could do this. I commented on these methods when I first heard of what was happening to the Dutch farmers and fertilizers. Congratulations!
This looks like an expansion on the French Intensive gardening method dating back to the 1500's- it works! The late Alan Chadwick could create an ecosystem over barren rock with the right stuff.
The only problem with this is the efficiency of harvest. Monoculture allows us to harvest outrageously quickly with specialised machinery built for a very specific task. When growing en masse this is massively important as it stops bugs, funghi, mould etc from eating/destroying vital crops. Its a great idea, just not very scaleable, so the more peope required to be fed this way, the less efficient it becomes.
This idea is hardly revolutionary, has been around for a long time. This is charming and a lovely way to cultivate fruit and berries. At the same time, it would be vastly more labor intensive which would erase the savings from other inputs. In addition, this won't keep bread on the shelf at the local market either. Didn't see any wheat in that forest.
There are plenty of examples of Permaculture operations around the world and I believe this will be the way we farm going forward. Exciting times ahead.
very exciting!
Agreed. This is the best way to farm. We want a permaculture site one day. For now we have our small channel and our balcony of plants.
@@LeafofLifeWorld it was exciting 50 years ago, now it's quite mundane.
My question is: How can you harvest those forests effectivly?
Probably the way most farms do and have always been doing and still do it by hand
@@LeafofLifeWorld In a modern industrial country like the Netherlands, are there sufficient numbers of people who want to farm the land (by hand, no less), or do they have to rely on migrant workers like many of the places in California? This is back-breaking labour which is why most people in North America choose to let someone else do it as long as they get their fresh lettuce in the middle of winter.
Again one man, one idea, held fast, can change the world. For good! Thank you for sharing. Love this, ❤
@Roots in Karst Actually Robert Hart predates within the food forest idea of Bill's expansion into Permaculture and its wider and more encompassing processes and zones, etc.
not sure about men changing the world unless there is a lot of clever pr involved. Nature of humanity is way out of place and time with nature on our planet and clever men are not what we need. We need to find our way as animals who get on better with life.
We have the answers. We just need the will.
The Foodforest is permaculture. Permaculture needs many employees. One would therefore have to get people out of the factories and employ them in agriculture.
As a Dutchy living in the farm-country for over 40 years, I can say that this is a nice ideology, but not applicaple for large scale. Plus what will happen when a dissease hits and destroys the trees and or crops. There are too many factors. Plus, farmers land and their houses are being stolen by the government and the banks, and if you think they will give that land to plans like this... ermmmmm.....
You never talked about how he aims to harvest on a mass scale?
There is no way that a 1.1 acre forest produces 5,000 tonnes of fruit and nuts. I doubt it does 5,000 kg ( 5 tonnes) from the whole 2 hectares (5 acres). Magic thinking involved here.
Magical thinking indeed. Permaculture has lots of good ideas but it is complicated to be genuine and to really produce food.
More like less than 500kg
5000 tons....🤣😅😂
Wooter?
5.000 tons annually food?
Dude, I’ve bin there, it’s a bunch of weeds with a berry here and there.
5.000 tons of food on one and a half hectare … sure. Am I one of the last none poked human beings with a functioning frontal cortex left or something?
5 tons it is greendealvoedselbossen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Boulestreau-Y.-van-Eck-W.-2016-Design-ans-performance-evaluation.pdf
Well, it seems a good idea from the standpoint of natural variety, solving ecologic issues etc. But in terms of productive growth, harvesting, transportation, storage and downstream further production of food it is rather far fetched. For a local food chain, in certain seasons, with a wealthy and eco-minded consumer group it might work somewhat. So this falls into the category ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’.
The 'local food chain' could encompass an entire country like Holland within a decade or two, so could be
super productive for the country,; but as ever, the difficulties of changing the mind of Big Farmer (I know!) away from efficiency and the bottom line, may well keep the plan within 'controllable' local areas. Wonder how many trees and bushes I could fit into my garden?
Productive growth? Harvesting is done the same way just one gets a mixed basket not one variety only, transport is reduced because we can grow them nearby where people live in any climate. Storage? Well nature stores food just fine on the plant itself,
Agreed. While it's a wonderful way to regenerate what we have "destroyed" the reality is, it is much more time consuming to search for a meal in a forest rather than plucking it from a cultivated row. Big food corporations and farmers may not be willing to give up their economic chain so easily. Also, to try and harvest for a global population so many more people would have to get involved in agriculture (not necessarily a bad thing per se) and create a food forest for themselves and local community. Harvests would have to be done individually, not commercially, eliminating produce sections in our grocery stores (also not a bad thing IMO). I'm all for it because I love gardening but unless we have a global catastrophe that wipes out the current social and economic structure, I don't see this happening.
Monoculture is a flaming disaster. Permaculture is another name for this. Lots of people have been doing this for years. Geoff Lawton has a lot on youtube about it. Farming in this manner requires zero external input. It works off of what nature does better than suits behind desks do. The problem with too many people is that they're incapable thinking their way through the dynamics involved in farming. They foolishly believe you toss sees on the ground and they grow then you pick. That is why centrally controlled agriculture of any sort especially the WEF version always results in abject failure and finger pointing. It's a lesson nobody seems to learn.
@@urallwyz3498 Sure. Have you ever tried to eat a pear or apple that is still hanging on the tree in Januari?
I'm 74 and food poor, living in one room with $100 dollars in Food Stamps a month, and I know I have all the skills and knowledge to produce all the healthy food I need on half an acre of good land. My quality of life would change immeasurably and my life span would lengthen.
If you're capable of that much labor, you could get a job and earn enough to eat steak, butter and eggs daily.
It does mean that foraging becomes an important pass-time. I need to see the calorie output per person foraging.
Dutch are able bodies, genius. Nothing is impossible by Dutch.
One day the dutch will win their long battle against the sea by making all of the atlantic dutch soil.
I wonder... I believe the statements made but I am missing the production level compared to mono-culture. Will the farmers have the same profitability? What would be their incentive to move to this?
Trees are Refrigerators ,they cool the air around them.I discovered this during the heatwave last year ,my local woodland was a lot cooler than town.
concrete and bricks store the heat... trees and shrubs block the heat... it also protects the soil from the suns rays = the soil is cool and moist instead of dry and dead... deserts have no trees to protect the soil, the soil dies and blows away... so that is why you gotta plant trees to protect the soils and yes in the start you need to protect and water the trees but in the end they will bring more water to the area and hold more water instead of it rushing into the ocean when it rains
When the air moves through the forrest it creates the venturi effect, in other words it is compressing and expanding as it moves through denser, and less dense forrest. A d we know that when a compressed gas expands it's temperature drops.
You can get 16 to 28 tonnes of potatoes from one acre, I would like to know how they got 5000 tonnes from the same amount of land.
About seventy-five years ago my father bought a house in a little subdivision. He planted fruit trees all over the yard, grapes along the fences that bordered two sides of the yard with a house showing one end and a raspberry patch on the other. In the summer we had apples peaches pears plums cherries apricots and sugar pears. We had grapes Concord green and honeydew. We had raspberries growing and hazelnuts. Along with a wide variety of garden vegetables inclusion Swiss chard watermelon tomatoes green peppers radishes asparagus and several other. We gave many fresh fruits to our neighbors my mother registered nurse and mother of pork and many vegetables and baked many pies and desserts. She sewed costumes for the school band and Halloween and V plays our school put on. She was very adaptable and wonderful mother. In the Summers we go into the woods and collect Hickory nuts and black walnuts and pick dewberries blackberries and loganberries in the resting corn fields. When I woke up with a child in the sixties I would go out in the yard and eat some cherries and then some grapes and go look in the garden and basically get my breakfast off of the ground. In the 50 my father had chickens and other wild foul. It was a wonderful childhood. I wish I'd known then what I know now. God bless my parents may they rest in happiness. Other people's yards in this subdivision were neatly trimmed and some had a few trees and some head absolutely no shade in the summer. We can change the way we shop we can change the way we live and we can save the planet but we must put away the cars and the dependency on big agricultural products. It's much healthier I've lived to be over 70 now, by at least three months. Take care of God blessing everyone plant yourself a damn Garden you'll feel better. The more gardens you plant better you live.
Excellent idea & video, a Paradise Regained for the Dutch, Godspeed!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Masanobu Fukuoka came up with this concept of the food forest, in the "one straw revolution" book in 1975. Then Bill Mollison adapted it into Permaculture
I think schauberger was a little before. He wrote in an around the early 1900th. Of what we are dealing with.
This method is in balance with the environment, it uses a different method of food production but still provides food.It is used in Cuba with great success.
Yes, you are right
Sorry...I am a Dutch woman 69 years old......But I don't agree with your plan at all...!! That Wouter is a phantast in agriculture.....!! I agree we shouldn't use ground fertilisors too much.....!! But you should realise that the vision of the EU is being presented here....!! The Dutch farmers are educated in using as little fertiliser as possible....!! Please stop advertising the EU-money machine...!! The Dutch need agriculture bringing food for the coming shortages....!! The Dutch government wants to gain farmland for building their big cities they want to controll the people with...!! Our Royals and Mark Rutte, our prime minister, tend to chose for that construction....BUT BE SURE THAT THE DUTCH PEOPLE DON'T...,! But Europe only gets CNN-LIKE NEWS.......MISINFORMATION...,!!
More about the Replacement of its People!
It is really exciting to know people are finally starting to understand the oneness of all. When I became a master gardener, the most incredible thing I realized was the symbiotic relationship between people, plants, and earth. Going deeper, look at pictures of soil mycorrhizae fungus, our veins and arteries, lightning, and solar system photos. God made oneness between everything. Hopefully we will stop desecrating the earth with pesticides and herbicides by replacing them over time with practices based on understanding the symbiotic relationship that exists.
Look up the meaning of the word 'incredible' and in fact the word 'credible' while you're at it .... then consider the meaning of what you have written
The Netflix documentary - Kiss the ground - is all about regenerative farming. Great concept. The Dutch plan applies this concept as well and takes is one step further with the idea of food forrests. Sounds great. But will this approach really enable production of food to serve our current diets? I would imagine that it would at least change the menu quite significantly. And since human nature is to resist change how would this plan bring about such change?
We might get healthy.
It could be adopted by enough farmers to make a positive effect on the environment . Even if intensive farming can’t be abandoned altogether.
This is the first time I have heard of the concept "Food Forest". I'll need to learn more but on the face of it, it looks good, maybe very good indeed. Additional benefits would be that a diverse selection of species would mean protection from a plague that could wipe out a single major food supply crop.
Look into Permaculture and Natural Farming if you’re looking to learn more
This is an Avert for the WEF, at the same Time Destroying 3000 Farms.
The forest of mentioned Wouter provides the world best vegetable restaurant ( according to Michelin ) in the world in Nijmegen with produce.
You lost me at “5000 tons of fruit and nuts” (4:10). On 2 acres in one year? Maybe a dutch ton is like a US pound?
A lot of framers in Western Canada are using Permaculture principles to remove reliance on chemicals and a more diverse crop.
Some of these techniques are actually old farming methods.
Amazing 👏
5000 tonnes of fruit and nuts annually on 1.1 acres? It's hard to believe that you're really producing an average of 230 lb of food per square foot every year. Also, you said he planted on 2 hectares but then said his food forest was 1.1 acres. Why?
Good questions. It sounded outragious. 5000 ton..... That is in no way realistic. That is an industry amount. One man processing 5000 ton... no way.
5000 tons annually..🤣😅😂
When something sounds to good to be true, it usually isn't true.
How much as I love the idea, there is no way you can keep removing food/fruit/vegatables/whatever from a piece land without complementing the nutrients that were taken from it. There's no such thing as free energy, no endless source of energy, nor an endless source of nutrients. It HAS to come from somewhere, right?
Plus the main thing, grains store well over long periods without much cost. And fresh produce needs refrigeration to last a few weeks during shipping and storing
Some big claims there.
How much food is produced per hectare compared with an organic field ? At what carbon and monetary cost ?
Permaculture is typically a carbon sink and, as the video says, has much lower overhead.
I *love* permaculture and food forests, and I think we need MUCH more of what's in this video.
But I find there's always a chasm between the vague claims of most permaculture advocates (of which I consider myself one) and the extremely pragmatic approach of conventional agriculture. If you're content to simply buy an acre here and there and convert it to a food forest, fine. But if you want to convince people this is the revolutionary change we need, you're going to have to start engaging with hard numbers, logistics, and trade-offs. Maybe that's happening with this initiative and this video is only meant to generate excitement. But overall, I wish there was more focus on concrete data collection and analysis. Simply talking about biodiversity and showing some "plant samples" to ostensibly prove forest soil is better than field soil isn't going to cut it.
Food forests and permaculture ARE an important way forward in the climate crisis. But we need more people to think like scientists about this and fewer people thinking like motivational speakers.
@@adamsmit2162 I have been doing a lot of reading about this topic, especially the programs that have grown (pun intended) from Australia. They have the research and data.
@@susanperry4177 I don't doubt it. I'm saying I want to see it. I'm currently taking a permaculture design course, and while I appreciate the large focus on principles and ethics, I feel that permaculture needs to be brought into an era where the science stops playing second fiddle to the "inspiration."
@@adamsmit2162 Wouter van Eck, the owner of this food forest has plenty of articles to read about his food forest, potential productivity compared to conventional agriculture, etc
Excellent video!! Thank you for posting and getting the word out on the concept of food forests. It really makes so much more sense than the way I was taught when I studied Ag. That was decades ago and even then there were whispers of moving away from the conventional methods. What was the norm back then was to completely sterilize the soil by overuse of chemicals and try to make up for it by...you guessed it...using even more chemicals!! Great marketing scheme, it made many people wealthy, but at tremendous cost to the families that lived on the farms. Since the chemicals were sold on credit, when the family became devasted due to chemical caused deaths, the chemical company ended up with the farms. Now, they are one of the biggest landholders in the USA. If only we would have had the Food Forest method of farming from the beginning, we could have avoided all that destruction. Good thing that farm land heals quickly once we start using better practices. It's a long way back but at least now we have found the right road.
In the old mixed farming with crop rotation system, didn't we have a commercially viable version of permaculture? Modern ideas and politics, along with urbanisation for work put paid to that.
I'm 60. My uncle took over his father's mixed farm in the early 1960s. Due to new government regulations and a falling rural population, he found his best option was to convert to a dairy farm. None of my cousins wanted to take over the farm due to both hugely increasing red tape and rising costs. My uncle worked 7 days a week and loved his life. Ill health forced him into retirement.
Local co-ops have been replaced by corporate business practices, to the detriment of our farmers. A new approach is needed all round.
It’s so cool that he can do something so incredible. But on a lever scale would it not be harder to harvest large amounts of the same crop?
Why? Most farms already harvest fruit and vegetables by hand. Its only grain fields that use tractor.
Just posted a comment above which may answer your question.
@@LeafofLifeWorld Well not only 'grain'. Almost every mono culture crop has his 'machine' to help gathering.
More farming by hand. In my European country that means importing seasonal labour from poorer countries.
Best add a living space with basic human facilities in the ground plan of the forest.
it will be more expensive then the current system , seeing as you can't get harvesters or other machinery in there so you need to hire many people to handpick everything. and that increases the overhead. what now is done by a farmer and his son for 5 hectares a day will now come down to 200 people for 3 hectares a day.
it's not the fertilizer or pesticides cost its the amount of work put in to sow and harvest the food which will be orders of magnitude higher than on a regular field.
As much as i love the idea of fresh locally produced food with zero pesticides nor fertilizer .. unless i see those foods for an affordable price in the shelfs .. it's just a hyped idea
Specifics, please! This' fantasy-talk without
plant names,
numbers of plants
yield quantities,
man hours of labor,
market value of crops,
etc.
Thanks for the attractive feel-good video.
There is a video in Dutch you can watch about specifics just such wouter van ek you find it
This is the way to go forward, regen ag is one of the fastest changing methods of farming in Australia now ❤🇦🇺
I think so too!
I am from the Netherlands. Never heard of this and I am good informed
Yes, yes, we know the Netherlands are a paradise, and they will plan their way into a peaceful, productive world through outlawing all of the agricultural practices that have led to abundant food supplies in the West today.