Temperate Agroforester: Volume 28 Number 1

In the summer of 2018, I was on a field trip studying Indigenous farming practices and had the pleasure of visiting Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. Located in northern New Mexico in the Santa Clara Pueblo, Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute is a 30-year-old food forest that is on an ⅛ of an acre. While I waited for the tour to begin, I admired the vast differences of the cultivated landscape of the permaculture institute to the scenic high desert that surrounded it. On the outside of the miniature food forest, the harsh summer sun heated the earth. Vegetation was sparse, which exposed the compacted soil and ants crawled about.

As soon as I stepped into the food forest, I felt immediate relief under the cool shade. Vegetation exploded in every direction as I navigated along trees of varying sizes, mossy boulders, shrubs, flowers, and vines. At the center of the food forest is a hand built sustainable adobe house, with grape vines crawling up the walls. Shamelessly, our tour group stretched our necks out like giraffes and nibbled the sweet grapes off the wall of the home. We felt immersed in the environment and giggled with child-like joy at what the mini food forest had to offer.

Tres Estrellas Organic Farm and Garden is a 35-year old, 6-acre, organic production and educational farm located in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, in a mountain valley amidst 240 acres of chaparral and oak woodlands. Tres Estrellas has served as the production farm for Rancho La Puerta Wellness Resort and Spa for over three decades, providing 60-80% of the produce used to prepare three farm-fresh meals a day for 5,000+ international guests annually. The fruits, vegetables, eggs, flowers, culinary herbs and goat milk that are produced on the farm are delivered, recently harvested, multiple times a week to the three commercial kitchens operated by Rancho La Puerta. The permaculture influenced farm incorporates biointensive fruit and vegetable production, agroforestry, agrobiodiversity conservation and animal husbandry to create a living example of ecological agriculture.  

“Kill two birds with one stone” — isn't it time this old adage got an update? Instead of killing two birds with one stone, why don't we save two birds with one hedgerow? And protect soil from erosion while we're at it? And protect plants from wind damage, too? And do a bunch of other great things that benefit humans, animals, and the environment? When it comes to achieving multiple goals at once, conservation hedgerows are a shining example.

It may be surprising to some readers, but the Southwestern U.S. is a major producer of pecans. The 65,000 acres under production in New Mexico and Arizona, combined with high average yields per acre, help to make these two states the second and fourth largest pecan producing states in the U.S., respectively (USDA, 2020). Most of those acres are monocultures, with the ground kept largely bare using herbicides or mechanical weed control to facilitate harvesting (Figure 1). A notable exception is the seven acres of pecans managed by Frank Geminden in Camp Verde, Arizona. His approach is an example of pecan production that is also agroforestry.

Founded in June 2019 at a meeting of 30 agroforestry enthusiasts and other natural resource professionals/conservationists in Farmington, New Mexico, the Southwest Agroforestry Action Network (SWAAN) is the youngest of the nine current regional agroforestry working groups recognized by AFTA. Despite the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 (including cancellation of our first conference in spring 2020 in Tucson, Arizona), SWAAN continues to thrive with regular quarterly virtual programs, collaborations, and many other activities. To continue advancing under prevailing uncertainty, our next meeting will be “hybrid” (in-person and virtual), in Moab, Utah, May 10-12, 2022. Our 2023 annual conference will be in Colorado. All SWAAN’s quarterly programs are recorded and available for viewing on our website.