Industrialized food systems use unsustainable practices leading to climate change, natural resource depletion, economic disparities across the value chain, and detrimental impacts on public health. In contrast, alternative food solutions such as food forests have the potential to provide healthy food, sufficient livelihoods, environmental services, and spaces for recreation, education, and community building. This study compiles evidence from more than 200 food forests worldwide, with detailed insights on 14 exemplary food forests in Europe, North America, and South America, gained through site visits and interviews. We present and illustrate the main services that food forests provide and assess their sustainability. The findings indicate that the majority of food forests perform well on social-cultural and environmental criteria by building capacity, providing food, enhancing biodiversity, and regenerating soil, among others. However, for broader impact, food forests need to go beyond the provision of social-cultural and environmental services and enhance their economic viability. There is a need for specific trainings and other measures targeting this deficit. This study appraises the current state of food forests and provides an orientation for food entrepreneurs, public officials, and activists to better understand food forests’ potential for advancing sustainable food systems.

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Food forests are multistrata ecosystems that pro­vide healthy food, livelihood opportunities, as well as social-cultural and environmental services. With these features, food forests address several prob­lems industrial food systems cause. While the overall number of food forests is continuously increasing worldwide, the rate of uptake is still low. This study reconstructs in detail how different types of food forests (n=7) were realized, mostly in Europe, with a focus on organization and manage­ment. Findings confirm and add to previous studies indicating that the successful implementa­tion of food forests depends on long-term land access, sufficient start-up funds, and adequate farming and entrepreneurial know-how, among other factors. While these are not unique factors compared to other farm and food businesses, sustainable food forests face particular obstacles to secure them. This study offers guidance to food entrepreneurs, public officials, and activists on how to successfully implement food forests to realize their full sustainability potential.

Sustainable food forests offer multiple benefits to urban sustainability challenges. Research to date mostly describes structure and services of individual food forests but provides little evidence and guidance for implementation. This study analyzes and evaluates an ongoing, multiyear, transdisciplinary project developing a sustainable urban food forest enterprise in Phoenix, AZ, through a collaboration between researchers and a coalition of nonprofit organizations. Unlike other food forest projects run by nonprofit organizations, this food forest originated as a sustainable enterprise that would provide jobs and livelihood opportunities in an economically marginalized urban area while pursuing social and environmental goals such as providing healthy food and a cooler microclimate. Efforts to date have built a coalition of supporters, secured a suitable site, codeveloped a vision and an action plan, and fundraised a major start-up donation. We evaluate these outcomes against a suite of success factors derived from implementation of other food forests and explain challenges in realizing these factors through the lens of a comprehensive sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Data for the accompanying research was collected through direct and participant observations, review of project documents, informal conversations, a stakeholder survey, and research diary reflections. Research findings indicate that despite achieving all the success factors, at least to some extent, the underdeveloped sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem jeopardizes long-term success and multiplication efforts. These findings confirm the importance of a sufficiently developed entrepreneurial ecosystem for successful development of sustainable food enterprises. They offer guidance to food entrepreneurs, urban developers, and city officials on how to develop and support sustainable food forest enterprises.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.