Thread: Food Forest

Last year, Seattle introduced the concept of a "food forest".
In essence, this is a plot of land planted with different edibles (apples, pears, etc.):

"All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest."

Certainly, this idea has advantages and I can imagine that numerous people will support and benefit from this project.
Yet, will it stop people from being opportunistic (e.g. plucking the fruit and then selling it to someone) and if not, can we prevent this?


Source:
Food Forest Comes to Life in Seattle

Might wonder about it being an attraction to addict transients, as well...

Food forests are not a new idea, both for private gardens and profit making producers. The idea of anyone and everyone picking what they want when they want is not quite so common. Though there are quite a few roadside veg plots in Australia where any passer-by can take what they need for a meal.

The basic idea of these free access food forests is that it's pretty hard to make money selling things that anyone can just go and pick for themselves. The only restriction really is that the plot, and the number of trees/bushes of any given fruit or vegetable, is large enough to prevent any one person or family from taking a significant portion of a crop.

[QUOTE=Cogito Ergo Sum;432260]Last year, Seattle introduced the concept of a "food forrest".
In essence, this is a plot of land planted with different edibles (apples, pears, etc.):

"All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest."

[QUOTE]

a really excellent use of tax dollars.
Bravo Seattle.

Let the tired rest and the hungry feast.

Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense.

Food Forests and Edible Landscapes are a Great Idea

"Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense."

This is another example that demonstrates how corrupt, soaking in (what I call) "conflicts of interest" and outdated, the monetary system is. A blueberry farmer whose purpose is(ought to be) to make sure as many humans have access to blueberries when they want, is in a conflict of interest and would oppose in our corrupt system for blueberries to be growing along the side of highways and in various public gardens so that anyone can pick them for free, for in our system the motivation for a farmer is not to provide food, (this is a means to an end, only providing food for those who can pay not to those who are hungry), the motivation and the end is to make profits, so the blueberry farmer is the one most opposed to people being able to access free blueberries. His interest, that is profit from selling blueberries, is in conflict against blueberries growing everywhere in abundance, he is in a sense in a conflict of interest against society. He his dependent on other peoples dependence, like a drug pusher, on people being dependent on him to access X (blueberries), if blueberries grow like grass, there would not be the profit making scarcity. That why Oil companies have suppressed electric cars since the early 1900s and fuel saving tech, thats why Rubber Tire, Oil and GM, pressure to make private an electric tramway in a US city so that it could be purchased and dismantled, because there was more corrupt and regressive profits to be made by selling more tires, more oil, and more cars if people didnt have an option for an electric tramway. Egg producers can only stay in business as long as anyone cant produce as much as they want, that means they must collude to restrict production to make a profit and even in some cases are pressured to throw in the garbage and not give away eggs beyond the limit they impose. The dealerships oppose their replacement with online purchasing, and make laws to slow down their demise. Workers n an appliance factory dont want to produce appliances that last because in our system they loose out if there is no longer a need for a period of time to produce something, they are in a conflict of interest with a durable product that avoids waste instead of cyclical consumption (and in effect needless work, because they are not Free, but depend on that needless work, that is making money run around in a merry go round without serving actual function for society).

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Food Forests and Edible Landscapes are a Great Idea

"Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense."

This is another example that demonstrates how corrupt, soaking in (what I call) "conflicts of interest" and outdated, the monetary system is. A blueberry farmer whose purpose is(ought to be) to make sure as many humans have access to blueberries when they want, is in a conflict of interest and would oppose in our corrupt system for blueberries to be growing along the side of highways and in various public gardens so that anyone can pick them for free, for in our system the motivation for a farmer is not to provide food, (this is a means to an end, only providing food for those who can pay not to those who are hungry), the motivation and the end is to make profits, so the blueberry farmer is the one most opposed to people being able to access free blueberries. His interest, that is profit from selling blueberries, is in conflict against blueberries growing everywhere in abundance, he is in a sense in a conflict of interest against society. He his dependent on other peoples dependence, like a drug pusher, on people being dependent on him to access X (blueberries), if blueberries grow like grass, there would not be the profit making scarcity. That why Oil companies have suppressed electric cars since the early 1900s and fuel saving tech, thats why Rubber Tire, Oil and GM, pressure to make private an electric tramway in a US city so that it could be purchased and dismantled, because there was more corrupt and regressive profits to be made by selling more tires, more oil, and more cars if people didnt have an option for an electric tramway. Egg producers can only stay in business as long as anyone cant produce as much as they want, that means they must collude to restrict production to make a profit and even in some cases are pressured to throw in the garbage and not give away eggs beyond the limit they impose. The dealerships oppose their replacement with online purchasing, and make laws to slow down their demise. Workers n an appliance factory dont want to produce appliances that last because in our system they loose out if there is no longer a need for a period of time to produce something, they are in a conflict of interest with a durable product that avoids waste instead of cyclical consumption (and in effect needless work, because they are not Free, but depend on that needless work, that is making money run around in a merry go round without serving actual function for society).

I agree with very little of the above, but it would be a much more inviting read with, at least, two or three paragraphs.

The problem is that blueberries don't grow like grass, except in your socialist utopia. Well, some blueberries grow wild, but not enough to supply the demand. There are a few growing wild around here, but they are rather smallish, and tend to get crowded out by other vegetation.

Now what really happens in your socialist utopia is that the independed farmer gets forced out of business, and blueberry production becomes the responsibility of the state. The bureacrats are put in charge, and create a 5 year plan for blueberry production. Quality suffers, because the farmers don't have to produce good products for sale, just try to meet a production quota.

Here's what happens in your socialist utopia. How many times does socialism have to fail before you figure it out?
Socialist Venezuela to Ration Toilet Paper | The Firewall
http://news.msn.com/world/food-toile...nezuelan-state

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense.

In other words, you state that the amount of food plucked by people will decrease the sale of edibles produced by ordinary farmers?

Originally Posted by Cogito Ergo Sum

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense.

In other words, you state that the amount of food plucked by people will decrease the sale of edibles produced by ordinary farmers?

If somebody can pick their blueberries for free, they won't be going to the farmer's market to purchase those same blueberries. And, since they will be taxed to support the operation of the state-owned blueberry farm, probably grown in less efficient manner than a private farmer would, they will have less money to spend at the market.

Most people in the local area here already have "food forests". In the very least, one garden is found at each house within my community, which is a place of less than a square mile. There are numerous wild trees/plants that grow here, several chestnut trees, two persimmon trees, a moleberry tree, black/rasp/dewberries, walnuts, pawpaws, and various other less prevalent plants. As to my knowledge, current domestic vegetable/fruit-bearing plants include: Over 10 chestnut trees, 9 peach trees, 1 cherry tree, three raspberry bushes, six apple trees, a pumpkin patch (20x20ft), minimum 3 gardens, two grape vines, six captive bee hives, 1 dewberry bush, 1 persimmon tree, 2 blueberry bushes. That is merely my immediate locality, and I don't see any reason why the neighboring communities would be much different "from what I've seen, they have a similar abundance of food producing plants". Even with that, there are two local farms that specialize in fruits/vegetables, one an apple orchard, and the other a farm specializing in various organic vegetables. Neither of them seem to be doing anything but thriving, and in fact, have been expanding over the past couple years.

Yes, perhaps cultivation of food by non-farmers could be bad for specialized farmers. But, can the farmers not simply change to cultivate corn/wheat/straw/hay/soy/barley/kale/etc? Plants that CANNOT be efficiently grown in places asides from open areas, and certainly could not be produced en mass by local non-farmers. Not to mention, that private cultivation of food results in farmer's markets, and farmer's markets lead to locals interacting, leading to a community where members know each other all by name.

Free clean air is also hurting the air-bottle-with-oxygen-mask industry, hurts those jobs. Just imagine, each breath of fresh air you take for free, could be money from your pocket going to an oxygen industry air farmer, who in turn would turn around and pay the interest on the loans made by bankers, who snapped their fingers to create the bank credit for free(for them not free for you), out of thin air.
And by having to pay for air, you need more money to squeeze out of fellow citizens for things you dare not imagine they could be made available for free/automated/or so efficient you could work 4 weeks, or else you couldnt pay your profiteering-CocaColAir and blueberries.


(btw, blueberry farmers could still be useful to provide blueberries for value added products, recipes, pies, juice cocktails, that would have the convenience of being ready made and save you time.)

That why Oil companies have suppressed electric cars since the early 1900s

That's only true for the last 30 years or so. IIRC the original electric car company (that supplied the New York cab industry?) succeeded with that model - and then shot themselves and the whole electric car industry in its own baby foot with its refusal to sell to individuals by insisting on leasing or running taxis only.

As for people growing their own fruit and veg or getting them from a coop or similar. For most of our industrial history, most people have grown some of their own produce. If more people start growing or picking certain kinds of fruit, that still leaves all the others for commercial growers. Let's face it, it's a rare garden that could grow bananas and blueberries or mangos and cherries.

Originally Posted by adelady

As for people growing their own fruit and veg or getting them from a coop or similar. For most of our industrial history, most people have grown some of their own produce. If more people start growing or picking certain kinds of fruit, that still leaves all the others for commercial growers. Let's face it, it's a rare garden that could grow bananas and blueberries or mangos and cherries.

Even Seattle for their forest there are pretty severe restriction on the variety of apples they can grow on the Wet side of the Cascade mountains because of diseases.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Free clean air is also hurting the air-bottle-with-oxygen-mask industry, hurts those jobs. Just imagine, each breath of fresh air you take for free, could be money from your pocket going to an oxygen industry air farmer, who in turn would turn around and pay the interest on the loans made by bankers, who snapped their fingers to create the bank credit for free(for them not free for you), out of thin air.

The mistake you are making is in thinking that something provided by the government is free. It's not. It's just a different and less efficient way of handling the cost of production. In a private enterprise, the people using the product are the same people paying for it. This means that the customers have a direct input to what is produced. They buy exactly what they want. Whereas, the government has to collect taxes then distribute the money to the producers. Business decisions are made based on politics. It's just a distortion of the free market.

Often it's a way of redistributing wealth. People who can't afford it will still be able to use the product. Though, since they don't have to pay, they're more likely to use it in a wasteful or inefficient manner.

"The mistake you are making is in thinking that something provided by the government is free."I m thinking you do not understand what im saying at all, you appear to project concerns you have while missing the point. Its like the image of dolphins and lovers, we perceive by comparing what we see with paterns we have mentally digested/constructed, to which you will probably reply "the government does not make dolphins better than lovers, the free market lovers are better than socialist dolphins" which is obvioulsy not what the point is.

Originally Posted by icewendigo

"The mistake you are making is in thinking that something provided by the government is free."I m thinking you do not understand what im saying at all, you appear to project concerns you have while missing the point.

Well, what we are talking about is the city planting and cultivating fruit trees for public use. This is basically a socialistic program, is it not? You are comparing that to free air. How have I missed the point.

Well, what we are talking about is the city planting and cultivating fruit trees for public use.

Are we?

From the link in the OP.

That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.

"Friends of the Food Forest undertook heroic outreach efforts to secure neighborhood support. The team mailed over 6,000 postcards in five different languages, tabled at events and fairs, and posted fliers,”

I expect that a group like this might be able to tap into funds for community development or somesuch from various government programs, but this is a community based program not a government supplied program. If this is anything like other programs around the world, the labour will be from volunteers, not government employees.

The air analogy was not about capitalist farming vs big government industrial farming, it was to highlight the incompatibility and opposition between that things that are in fact free and renewable, like air, and the market/monetary system, and that this opposition can lead groups to fight against progress/abundance/freedom when they profit from established-relics/scarcity/dependance.


Theres no need to read all this banter below (grey) since adelady makes a much better and clearer comment in two sentences

(For example of decoupling between human needs and profit seeking, if a very simple salt was thought to be a potential cure for cancer, not a single pharma or profit making corporation financed the research, because even if it were to be a cure, it was not patent-able material, they could not profit from it, they do not want a cure for cancer, or even a cure that can be produced for pennies, they want a marketing-hyped pseudo-cure they can $ell for as much as possible, they are not in the business of curing cancer for the benefit of humanity.
If the national institute for health discovered a protein by accident, since they aren't in the business of manufacturing pill they sold the discovery(instead of making it freely available to all) to capitalist scoundrels for a token price, the pills cost pennies to make, they could sell them for a dime or a quarter and make a profit, but they are not there to make just a profit, ther are there to make as much profits as humanly imaginable, and since the protein was a life and death supplement, they knew they could in fact sell the pill for 2,000% profit because people given the choice of second mortaging their house for a 5 cent pill sold at 1000$ would in fact find 1000$ to avoid dying. Pharmaceuticals pressured the US government to prevent Europeans to sell at cost medication to Africa, because its better for them to make a "profit" by selling pills to a thousand people and let 5 million people die, than to allow those 1000 and the 5 million to get medication for the price it costs to manufacture it. )


Anyway, back to Food Forests, planting fruit producing varieties of plants, instead of planting other varieties that dont, would be seen as a benefit in most sane or non-monetary-system society and only in a corrupt monetary-system society would a functional benefit available to the public be perceived as problem. Its not like its the communist big government with a thousand bureaucrats with tables and papers managing how many apples will a branch produce, you plant an apple tree instead of a something-else, and the biological process works for you without getting permission from the government, and apples can be picked for "free" no money without the government setting the price, because the tree used its genetic code to reorganise the soil and rain water and the tree did not pay Bechtel for the right to drink water that fell from the sky, it grows the apple and you can pick one. A Food Forest and edible landscape Its not for industrial harvest to supply a Stalinian apple pie factory or a mint factory.

Trees are communists, they grow in the forest and desecrate the free market by producing fruits and nuts without the profit motive, ahhhrrggg, Im tearing my libertarian moneymaking shirt! Shhrrkk! Those socialist trees! Arrhhh!

So planting is not free, but since we do plant things for public places anyway, and spend public money on bombs, we might as well decide to plant things that produce food (unless the goat lobby is more powerful than humanity).

"I expect that a group like this might be able to tap into funds for community development or somesuch from various government programs, but this is a community based program not a government supplied program. If this is anything like other programs around the world, the labour will be from volunteers, not government employees."

yes, thats what I should have written

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Bad idea. The subsidized food will undercut the prices for ordinary farmers trying to sell produce raised at their own expense.

Oh, give it a rest. Everything people do to help others is "Socialism" in your mind. Does donating food to the poor usually cause a company to lose tons of profit? No. It would likely only provide good publicity and increase sales. Also, it would inspire people to learn to be generous and pitch in and help others. Don't be such a hardass Randian.

I think it would be more constructive to focus on the content and message, and less on taking pot shots at the form or the messenger.

(I am far from a paragon of moderation, so theres room for improvement in my comments too, though its hard to resist when its mixed with humour )

Originally Posted by adelady

I expect that a group like this might be able to tap into funds for community development or somesuch from various government programs, but this is a community based program not a government supplied program. If this is anything like other programs around the world, the labour will be from volunteers, not government employees. [/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR]

In Vancouver, to the north, that's exactly how these community gardens operate. Sometimes they're neglected - and yes Neverfly they often harbour street people - but paid government employees (i.e. parks staff) have nothing to do with them.

The economic impact of free-to-pick fruit is ridiculously low. For example naturalized Himalayan blackberry is a monstrously invasive species in the Pacific Northwest especially in urban areas, it consistently yields masses of excellent fruit, yet no one including poor folk can be bothered to harvest it in serious volume... rather we buy cheap bananas as needed. Most telling is that just beside the banana bin are nicely packaged little 100g boxes of these same blackberries, profitable at $5 retail.

I think the real value of community gardens is in the social capital they generate. Getting neighbors to mingle is also good for the economy.

Well I find his stance insulting to the millions of Americans in this country who have little or nothing to eat on a regular basis. People like him are in Congress right now making terrible decisions which will ruin the lives of American citizens all in the name of unbridled Capitalism.

Originally Posted by mikepotter84

Well I find his stance insulting to the millions of Americans in this country who have little or nothing to eat on a regular basis. People like him are in Congress right now making terrible decisions which will ruin the lives of American citizens all in the name of unbridled Capitalism.

Will you please post a link that gives credence to your statement.

Are you kidding? Asking for proof of this is like asking me to prove that the sky is blue or whether or not John Boehner is a Neanderthal.

Conservatives have fought against extending unemployment benefits, universal healthcare, food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, etc since Obama took office.

Originally Posted by mikepotter84

Are you kidding? Asking for proof of this is like asking me to prove that the sky is blue or whether or not John Boehner is a Neanderthal.

Oh, well, here is a link from the BBC, if you have time, give it the once over.

BBC News - The children going hungry in America

I like the idea of raising minimum wage mentioned in the article. Thanks. Are you really a Conservative or do you just play one on TV during your General Electric program?