Precisely because of the long lead time and different way in which the revenue model is created and constructed, an awful lot of heated opinions and disappointments and sometimes even arguments arise. A food forest needs start-up time. It needs to be given that time to build the soil. So, don't try to get income from a food forest in year 1, that only starts to take off after 5 years or so, and even then not by a long shot. Keep your job during that time, or do something else on a piece of land next to it, or work with volunteers.
In our annual training, module business plan is about exactly this and we have already seen many interesting, beautiful business models that tell us that this answer is yes, but also that there is no such thing as one recipe, one answer. Even stronger, that this is exactly the way of thinking that you first have to learn to let go of, if you want to arrive at a beautiful new business model.
We come from an agricultural and natural system full of generic solutions and straightforward monocultures. That is exactly what we need to break away from as humanity. And that is also what our courses are about to a large extent: food forests are about learning to look at landscape, food and nature differently. Only then can you move on to learning to do things differently, budgeting and earning.
Otherwise, take a look at our four food forest themes and their business cases. or our knowledge page on food forest budgeting.
