Farming with the forest: can reforestation help refugees meet their food needs?

If you’re reading this article, no doubt you already know that humans need to radically transform the way global food systems operate. The climate crisis is accelerating faster than many scientists and activists anticipated. The way that humans grow, source, transport (and waste) food is estimated to contribute to around 25% of all the world’s human-caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions, indeed with animal agriculture being the bulk of that figure (IPCC ‘Climate Change and Land’). At the same time, conventional agriculture is stripping soils of nutrients, and ecosystem destruction means that it’s harder for landscapes to naturally bounce-back from shocks like extreme weather events.

But what’s the alternative? In this article, we’ll explore how perennial food systems can be one antidote to destructive food production practices. We’ll explore some scientific research, while also asking a Permaculture practitioner for some advice for refugee-led community groups - what can we do right now to integrate perennial growing practices?

Across increasingly climate-stressed and degraded landscapes, food forests offer a proven way to rebuild soils, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Research is increasingly showing that integrating trees with food production enhances multiple ecosystem services at once: soil carbon, water regulation, pollinator habitat, microclimate buffering, and often farm-level resilience and incomes (Matieu, A. et al. 2025).

Annual plants grown in monoculture often rely on digging and tilling, as well as heavy chemical inputs, massively diminishing soil and biodiversity health. Perennial systems, by contrast, focus on building soil. They cycle carbon through living roots and soil, protecting and feeding soil life. Recent syntheses find agroforestry raises soil organic carbon by around 10% on average compared with other land uses. Biodiversity, nutrient retention and erosion control rises consistently on regenerative farms (Pan, J. et al. 2023).

What could this mean in a displacement context? Historically, refugee communities have been offered staples such as rice or grains as part of their support packages. These are mostly annual crops from cereals and oilseeds. But a transition toward regionally adapted, local and culturally appropriate perennial staples like nuts, starchy fruits, hardy tubers, and protein-rich tree crops can diversify diets, increase nutrition, and reduce (or eliminate) degenerative food growing practices. Academic reviews catalog dozens of perennial staple species with great nutrient density and storability which could offer viable alternatives to annuals (eg. Kreitzman, M et al. 2020).

But we shouldn’t just aim to replicate a conventional farming system, simply with perennials like trees instead of annuals. This transition must be designed in a way that incorporates local and indigenous wisdom, native species of crops, and biodiversity. We need nature-inspired farming practices that integrate a richness of diversity, integrate traditional ecological knowledge, store and sink water in healthy hydrological cycles, and create habitats for wildlife.

Imagine this: luscious green forests with layered canopies, year-round ground cover, living mulches, and mixed perennials. This could be our food system, and rich examples of this are emerging across the globe. Indeed, indigenous and land-based communities are stewarding unbroken examples of food forestry.

Can food forestry work in displacement settings? In short, yes, especially if designed collaboratively and with maintenance in mind. Perennial planting can take careful maintenance like regular watering in dry climates in the first few years of planting, and there can also be a transition period where there is a lower crop harvest in the first few seasons. Host and refugee communities should be consulted in the process to make these spaces as relevant and useful for all communities, and careful planning and governance needs to be considered. Who will water? Who will prune? Who will make sure wild grazing animals are not eating all the saplings?

Currently there are a number of barriers to growing perennials in many displacement contexts. In some countries this includes laws or customs which forbid or limit any kind of planting or building which could imply that refugees are settling permanently. Here and more widely, we need a change in policy away from an emphasis on conventional, degenerative farming, stopping government subsidies toward destructive agricultural practices like chemical inputs, and supporting farmers to transition toward regenerative farming.

Edible mushrooms should be integrated, cultivated on prunings, woodchips, or agroforestry by-products, to turn “waste” into nutrient-dense food and income, while contributing to soil structure. Quick-growing crops like mushrooms can also support the transition period where, in the first few years, there may be a small drop in farmland productivity as the system establishes.

Managed coppice and fast-growing woodlots can supply some fuel from pruned branches, but clean-cooking transitions are critical for health, safety, and forest protection. Pilots with solar cookers offer a clean and climate-friendly solution where sunlight and cooking practices align (UNHCR 2021).

There’s no need to wait. You can start now!

Permaculture teacher and Re-Alliance Correspondent Ansiima Casinga Rolande gives advice to land-based practitioners.

Mulch. Never leave the soil bare. Keep soils covered with ground-cover plants or leaves, prunings, and crop residues to feed microbes, retain moisture, and reduce weeding. Plant ‘chop-and-drop’ plants like legumes that fix nitrogen.

Plant in layers and think in guilds. Combine large canopy trees like nuts or fruit trees, sub-canopy shrubs like berries, vines, herbaceous perennials, ground-covers, and root crops. Making plant ‘guilds’ means choosing plants that work together and contribute to the whole farm system.

Plan across time and usage. Think about when you would harvest the crops so that you always have nutritious foods to eat, or how you might save and preserve heavy-croppers like nuts. If possible, you’ll always want to have a diversity of crops ready to harvest at once: some for eating fresh, some for preserving, and some for trading, sharing or selling.

Integrate plants as natural fertilisers. Some plants are valuable for their fertile-rich composition, meaning that they can be integrated into your farm ecosystem to be used in compost-teas and organic fertiliser liquids. Many of these plants you can also simply ‘chop-and-drop’ to create biodegradable, high-nutrient mulches.

Integrate mushrooms. Inoculate woodchips or logs from pruning and start with reliable oyster or shiitake varieties, but try to find local edible varieties.

Consider cash crops. You may want to integrate plants that you can harvest for their high value, for trading, sharing or selling. For example, integrating coffee into a biodiverse food forest is a great way to have tradable produce, and good chop-and-drop biomass from pruning the branches.

Moving from annual monocultures toward biodiversity-rich food forestry will not replace destructive practices overnight. But the evidence is strong that even partial transitions like hedgerows, living fences, alley cropping, small food forests, and communal gardens can deliver measurable climate, soil, and livelihood benefits now, while opening pathways to wider cultural changes in the future. This is regeneration we can start today.