Urban food forests in the American Southwest

Abstract

Food forests are multilayered polycultures of mostly perennial species and an agroforestry practice well-suited to the urban environment. They are gaining increasing attention in temperate regions of Europe and the United States, but, to date, there has been little research on them in the American Southwest. In this study, we visited 14 food forests, all but two of which were in urban or peri-urban areas. At 12 of the food forests, we interviewed a person who established or manages them. The food forests span a significant range of the physical environments, types of communities, and ownerships found in the American Southwest. Despite challenges associated with the southwestern environment, such as the hot, dry climate and difficult soil conditions, we found clear evidence that food forests can be successfully established in the urban areas of this region. In addition to food production, these food forests are providing numerous other benefits such as mitigating the urban heat island effect, increasing local biodiversity, and improving the aesthetics of urban neighborhoods. While there is a need for additional research, a variety of networks and information sources have been established that are providing both practical information and inspiration for the establishment of additional food forests in the region. INTRODUCTIONFood forests, also known by names such as forest gardens, are multilayered polycultures consisting of mostly perennial species. They may include seven or more layers including overstory and midstory trees, shrubs, herbaceous species, ground cover plants, root crops, vines, an aquatic layer, and fungi (Butler et al., 2018;Crawford, 2010;Jacke & Toensmeier, 2005). Food forests are increasingly recognized as an agroforestry practice (Park et al., 2019;Gold & Garrett, 2021) along with the other temperate agroforestry practices of alley cropping, forest farming, riparian buffers, silvopasture, and windbreaks.Abbreviations: CRMPI, Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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