21 March 2025

International Day of Forests is celebrated every year on March 21, a day proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness of the importance of forests to our planet.

This year’s theme is Forests and Food, which highlights the crucial role forests play in sustainable food systems.

In New Zealand, combining trees with food production is gaining momentum with a focus on both agroforestry and food forest systems.

While Scion has been involved in agroforestry research off-and-on since at least the 1970’s, food forests are an exciting new area that may offer opportunities to boost food security and enhance environmental sustainability. But what are food forests? And is there a role for food forests in New Zealand forestry?

Scion's forestry management scientist and Te Ao Māori researcher Lania Holt and her team address those questions in a recently published paper in the New Zealand Journal of Forestry. They explore the concept of food forests, their potential benefits for the forestry sector, and provide a glossary of key terms related to food forests.

One outcome from this research was an agreed upon definition of what a food forest is in a New Zealand forestry context.

Food Forest: an area of forest being intentionally managed for commercial, recreational/customary use food production, with at least one complimentary tree species, and with at least one food crop produced in at least two forest layers, with a minimum extent of 5 hectares which at maturity will contain at least 10% tall tree, 20% non-tall tree, and 20% ground cover in each hectare.

This definition is proposed as a starting place to fine-tune aspects of a food forests system in New Zealand.

Feedback from the workshops identified four cases for why a food forest system should be developed in New Zealand:

• enhancing national food security
• unlocking the economic potential and multiple benefits of non-timber forest products
• creating new knowledge of sustainable food systems and social licence in forestry
• creating a continuous cover forestry (CCF) option with substantive environmental benefits.

If anyone is interested in this topic, and has thoughts on progressing food forests (or not) within forestry in New Zealand, please contact Lania.

At Scion we’ve transformed our focus from a purely scientific-driven to a more impact-driven approach. Our work now centres around delivering long-term economic, environmental, and community benefits for New Zealand.

From advancing sustainable forest management practices to driving innovations in biodiversity conservation, our research directly supports the resilience and restoration of forests—vital ecosystems for global food security and climate stability.

More on this topic here.