Which regenerative ecosystem you should base your business off of?
The concept of a “food forest” is something I learned when I got my Permaculture Design Certification in 2012.
The term “permaculture” is a play on the words, permanent agriculture, and was coined to describe designing food-growing systems that mimic how nature grows food.
And, of course, it doesn't actually originate there…
The food forest concept echoes the forest gardens common among the indigenous societies of North America's Northwestern coast and worldwide.
Indigenous peoples around the world have lived and continue to live in relationship with the land.
Nature grows food in forests.
Rainforests cover less than 2% of the Earth's total surface area, yet they are home to 50% of the Earth's plants and animals.
Out of 3000 plants the US National Cancer Institute has identified as useful in the treatment of cancer, 70% of these plants are found only in rainforests. At least 80% of the developed world’s food originated in the tropical rainforest —
fruits like avocados, oranges, tomatoes, vegetables, like corn potatoes, winter squash
spices like black pepper, coffee, vanilla
nuts like Brazil, nuts, cashews.
All of these originated from rainforests.
These food forests or forest gardens are a part of our human nature and are resilient as fuck.
A depressing/inspiring example of this is the forest gardens established around first nation villages in Alaska. Colonists forcibly removed the indigenous people from their villages 150 years ago, but the forest gardens are currently thriving without human intervention.
The land is waiting for its people to return.
These systems don't require pesticides to thrive or human intervention. They don't require humans at all.
Nature designed them to be self-reliant and to self-regulate through many species of plants, animals, fungi, insects, bacteria, rocks, minerals, molecules, elements, all collaborating and cohabitating in a multi-dimensional cycle of death and growth. All in the name of increased alive-ness of this system.
In ecological succession, most ecosystems end up like a forest — and without significant disturbances like wildfires or severe climate changes or humans coming through and clear-cutting it, the forest will endure indefinitely because the system becomes stable and self perpetuating.
So within permaculture, whether you're designing a backyard food growing system or a hundred plus acre farm, you're using this concept of a food forest and its design.
Because who is the most fertile, abundant, resilient systems designer?
Nature.
And when we design like Nature does, our systems are less reliant on us.
We get our freedom and our time back.
And we create something beautiful and wild for the world that can shock the current industrial status quo.
And it doesn't have to stop at food growing systems. Don't worry. We're not just talking about that today.
We can use nature's principles and teachings for designing business systems too.
If you opened this email, you want to know which regenerative ecosystem you should base your business systems off of to hit your goals of more abundance, more spaciousness, more impact, all that good stuff.
I made a full fucking quiz + free video series for you to dive into that fully! (Click here to access now)
Most business owners I know are shortsighted in their planning, they plan for the next year, or maybe even just the next month, which is so understandable if you're trying to make ends meet.
But the longer-term vision of your business — I'm talking the next 5 or 10+ years is what really needs to be driving the ship. Because the things that you invest your money in now, the things you invest your precious time in now, can be building up progressively over time — growing like a forest…
…or they will need to be burned down later, to build anew.
