Abstract
Food forests, also known as forest gardens, are an agroforestry cultivation system that rooted in ancient and traditional culture, wildly used by aborigines in tropical regions. Food forests mimic the diverse forest structure, and cultivate multiple crops in the same space by different physical layers, for example the canopy, subcanopy, shrub, herbaceous layers, ground covers, vines, roots, mushrooms etc. This adaptable polyculture system is mentioned and considered as a solution of many environmental issues caused by urban development as well as extreme weather events, such as food security, floods and droughts, biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and pesticides. For example the Beacon forest located in Seattle, Pacific NW was founded for locals to do urban farming and provide healthy affordable food to the surrounding community. This project plans to apply the knowledge advantage of forest researchers, compare food forestry examples throughout the world in a variety of climate settings, and develop a doable framework for the Taiwan.