Food forests are places designed to produce more edible crops per acre, with eventually less maintenance (because they rely on perennials, 3D plantings, and synergies between plants) than conventional gardens, and less imported inputs (because they focus on improving soil and recycling “waste”) than industrial agriculture. There are many permaculture principles to help them thrive, but without some social/economic principles they might still fail.

The 8 Ostrom Principles are social/economic design principles that were empirically (by studying both successful and failed communities) discovered by Elinor Ostrom to help local communities self-manage resources to avoid the Tragedy of the Commons (TOC), without big government regulations.

Failure modes

There are 3 ways that urban food forests can and have failed:

1. The crops are over-harvested, or “wiped out”, in a classic TOC manner.
2. The crops are left to rot, neglected and not harvested, or harvested before ripeness.
3. the plants that produce the harvest are not maintained

2 and 3 are still examples of TOC, though not in the classic sense of selfish short-term incentives hurting everyone in the long run. More like selfish, short term incentives wasting some resources.

1 is not as much of a problem for food forests as for hunting of wildlife, or grazing cattle on a pasture, because the wiping out the fruit, does not wipe out the plants that produce it. It’s more of a problem of equity, that only the most ruthless and competitive harvesters get the harvest, not leaving any for other people.

2 can happen because many urbanites are spoiled with cheap food, or even free food from food banks or dumpsters. The cheap and free food from food banks and dumpsters is already processed and spiced, does not require much labor to harvest, mostly free from blemishes and pests and oftentimes also does not require additional cooking, whereas the food harvested may need some extra processing. Or else it may not be as addictive as the processed free and cheap food.

3 can happen because these plants require special care that city employees are not trained for. Mowing around them can be tricky. They might require compost more often than regular park trees (hopefully from their own leaves, rather than exporting the leaves and importing fertilizer). They will require pruning and special pest management. Neglect can happen because the initial funding dries out before the trees start producing any significant fruits and nuts (can take 5-10 years).

Solutions to prevent failure

1. Monitoring of people and resources is one of the 8  Ostrom Principles. This can include pamphlets or signs with harvesting guidelines, and video cameras that can alert security personnel if someone is over-harvesting. Another potential solution (and Ostrom Principle) is making harvesting proportional to costs of maintenance, either by selling licenses (as is done with Fish and Wildlife), or restricting it to people who volunteer in the maintenance. Also, breaking the harvesting guidelines needs to be punished with proportional punishments (another Ostrom Principle)
2. Perhaps food banks can offer alternatives to handouts, giving people harvesting rights instead.
3. Have enough experts that get benefits (in the form of either pay or harvest) indefinitely, not just during the startup period. There might be citizens who object to paying more taxes, or having less tax income go to other projects, in order to benefit only the people who harvest or the people who go to the park and get extra aesthetic pleasure from food crops. Or some citizens might object for other reasons such as fear of attracting rodents. Perhaps then the maintenance people and experts need to be part of the non-profit or at least be part of the decision making process about how crops are maintained and harvested (Ostrom Principle), and either need to be paid by the non-profit, or get harvesting benefits. Or else the non-profit needs to be well-nested (somewhat different than my concept of “proper nesting”) in the city government (Ostrom Principle).