A collaboration between nonprofit organizations and community volunteers is helping to combat food insecurity by revitalizing an old family farm.
Only four miles from Atlanta's city center, the Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill has become a source of free nutrition for those who live in a food desert.
According to The Hearty Soul, approximately 500,000 Atlanta residents have trouble accessing healthy food, in part because of the city's limited public transportation infrastructure. However, the Browns Mill food forest serves an area in which one-third of residents live in poverty.
While homeowners can grow their own food forests — a practice that can yield significant savings on grocery bills — Atlanta's is the largest public version in the United States, per The Conservation Fund, one of the nonprofits that made the vision possible.
Trees Atlanta and the city's Office of Sustainability and Resilience and Department of Parks and Recreation were also involved in creating the food forest, which features 30 garden beds, more than 100 fruit trees, and walking trails supporting outdoor recreational activities, like foraging.
All of the forest's bounty is free to harvest, while educational programs offer opportunities to learn about gardening, cooking, and healthy eating.
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"The forest is open to the public. … It kind of flips our agricultural model on its head," Trees Atlanta permaculture designer Mike McCord said, per The Hearty Soul. "Unlike with commercial farming, we're growing food on multiple layers."
Those layers include "canopy trees, small trees, bushes, ground covers, vines, fungus, things going on in the root zone," as McCord explained. Selecting native trees and plants for the garden also benefits local wildlife and pollinators — in addition to supporting air and water quality and mitigating flooding from stormwater runoff.
Stacy Funderburke, conservation acquisition associate at The Conservation Fund, suggested that more urban food forests could be coming to Atlanta soon. According to the nonprofit, the U.S. Forest Service, Georgia Forestry Commission, The Mary Alice and Bennett Brown Foundation, and The Turner Foundation are among the initiative's partners.
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Definitely 👍 "The Parks Department is thinking about it," Funderburke said, per The Hearty Soul. "It's great to fast-forward five years from now. What if there were five of these food forests sprinkled around Atlanta? There could be. There's enough land. It's more about showing it's possible."
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