The good news is there\u2019s a simple way to cool things down: plant trees. \u201cYou\u2019re easily 10 degrees cooler stepping under the shade of a tree,\u201d said Brad Lancaster, an urban forester in Tucson. \u201cIt\u2019s dramatically cooler.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A movement is underway to populate the city\u2019s street corners and vacant lots with groves of trees. Tucson\u2019s city government, which has pledged to plant one million trees by 2030<\/a>, recently got $5 million from the Biden administration to spur the effort \u2014 a portion of the $1 billion that the U.S. Forest Service committed last fall to urban and small-scale forestry projects across the United States, aiming to make communities more resilient to climate change and extreme heat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But in Tucson and many other cities, tree-planting initiatives can tackle a lot more than scorching temperatures. What if Tucson\u2019s million new trees\u2014and the rest of the country\u2019s\u2014didn\u2019t just keep sidewalks cool? What if they helped feed people, too? <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what Brandon Merchant hopes will happen on the shadeless south side of Tucson, a city where about one-fifth<\/a> of the population lives more than a mile from a grocery store. He\u2019s working on a project to plant velvet mesquite trees that thrive in the dry Sonoran Desert, and have been used for centuries as a food source. The mesquite trees\u2019 seed pods can be ground into a sweet, protein-rich flour used to make bread, cookies, and pancakes. Merchant, who works at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, sees cultivating mesquite around the city and surrounding areas as an opportunity to ease both heat and hunger. The outcome could be a network of \u201cfood forests,\u201d community spaces where volunteers tend fruit trees and other edible plants for neighbors to forage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThinking about the root causes of hunger and the root causes of health issues, there are all these things that tie together: lack of green spaces, lack of biodiversity,\u201d Merchant said. (The food bank received half a million dollars from the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Merchant\u2019s initiative fits into a national trend of combining forestry \u2014 and Forest Service funding \u2014 with efforts to feed people. Volunteers, school teachers, and urban farmers in cities across the country are planting fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and other edible plants in public spaces to create shade, provide access to green space, and supply neighbors with free and healthy food. These food forests, forest gardens, and edible parks have sprouted up at churches, schools, empty lots, and street corners in numerous cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, and Miami. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely growing in popularity,\u201d said Cara Rockwell, who researches agroforestry and sustainable food systems at Florida International University. \u201cFood security is one of the huge benefits.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n There are also numerous environmental benefits: Trees improve air quality, suck carbon from the atmosphere, and create habitat for wildlife, said Mikaela Schmitt-Harsh, an urban forestry expert at James Madison University in Virginia. \u201cI think food forests are gaining popularity alongside other urban green space efforts, community gardens, green rooftops,\u201d she added. \u201cAll of those efforts I think are moving us in a positive direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers say food forests are unlikely to produce enough food to feed everyone in need of it. But Schmitt-Harsh said they could help supplement diets, especially in neighborhoods that are far from grocery stores. \u201cA lot has to go into the planning of where the food forest is, when the fruits are harvestable, and whether the harvestable fruits are equitably distributed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She pointed to the Philadelphia Orchard Project<\/a> as an emblem of success. That nonprofit has partnered with schools, churches, public recreation centers, and urban farms to oversee some 68 community orchards across the city. Their network of orchards and food forests generated more than 11,000 pounds of fresh produce last year, according to Phil Forsyth, co-executive director of the nonprofit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the sites in Philadelphia have only three or four trees. Others have over 100, said Kim Jordan, the organization\u2019s other executive director. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a variety of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and vines, pollinator plants, ground cover, perennial vegetables\u2014a whole range of things,\u201d Jordan said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The community food bank in Tucson started its project in 2021, when it bought six shade huts to shelter saplings. Each hut can house dozens of baby trees, which are grown in bags and irrigated until they become sturdy enough to be planted in the ground. Over the past three years, Merchant has partnered with a high school, a community farm, and the Tohono O’odham tribal nation to nurse, plant, and maintain the trees. So far they\u2019ve only put a few dozen saplings in the ground, and Merchant aims to ramp up efforts with a few hundred more plantings this year. His initial goal, which he described as \u201clofty and ambitious,\u201d is to plant 20,000 trees by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The food bank is also organizing workshops on growing, pruning, and harvesting, as well as courses on cooking with mesquite flour. And they\u2019ve hosted community events, where people bring seed pods to pound into flour \u2014 a process that requires a big hammermill that isn\u2019t easy to use on your own, Merchant said. Those events feature a mesquite pancake cookoff, using the fresh flour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Merchant is drawing on a model of tree-planting<\/a> that Lancaster, the urban forester, has been pioneering for 30 years in a downtown neighborhood called Dunbar Spring. That area was once as barren as much of southern Tucson, but a group of volunteers led by Lancaster \u2014 who started planting velvet mesquite and other native trees in 1996 \u2014 has built up an impressive canopy. Over three decades, neighborhood foresters have transformed Dunbar Spring\u2019s bald curbsides into lush forests of mesquite, hackberry, cholla and prickly pear cactus, and more\u2014all plants that have edible parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are over 400 native food plants in the Sonoran Desert, so we tapped into that,\u201d Lancaster said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we focused our planting on.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Dunbar Spring food forest is now what Lancaster calls a \u201cliving pantry<\/a>.\u201d He told Grist that up to a quarter of the food he eats \u2014 and half of what he feeds his Nigerian dwarf goats \u2014 is harvested from plants in the neighborhood\u2019s forest. \u201cThose percentages could be much more if I were putting more time into the harvests.\u201d The more than 1,700 trees and shrubs planted by Lancaster\u2019s group have also stored a ton of water \u2014 a precious commodity in the Sonoran Desert \u2014 by slurping up an estimated 1 million gallons of rainwater that otherwise would have flowed off the pavement into storm drains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another well-established food forest skirts the Old West Church in Boston, where volunteers have spent a decade transforming a city lawn into a grove of apple, pear, and cherry trees hovering over vegetable, pollinator, and herb gardens. Their produce \u2014 ranging from tomatoes and eggplants to winter melons \u2014 gets donated to Women\u2019s Lunch Place, a local shelter for women without permanent housing, according to Karen Spiller, a professor of sustainable food systems at the University of New Hampshire and a member of Old West Church who helps with the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s open for harvest at any time,\u201d Spiller said. \u201cIt\u2019s not \u2018Leave a dollar, and pick an apple.\u2019 You can pick your apple and eat your apple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Merchant wants to apply the same ethic in Tucson: mesquite pods for all to pick \u2014 and free pancakes after a day staying cool in the shade.<\/p>\n This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline Hot? Hungry? Step inside these food forests.<\/a> on Jan 29, 2024.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/grist.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-1.png?quality=75&strip=all\")
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