A new conversation every fortnight (Dutch only)
This is the Food Forestcast. Your fortnightly update on everything to do with professional food forests and the pioneers who are working on them. Frank Gorter and Marieke Karssen of Food from the Forest travel to the kitchen tables of the food forest pioneers of the Netherlands. They want to find out all about their deeper motivations, what food forests mean to them and how they see the future of food forests in the Netherlands and maybe even the world.They do this because they want to make the food forest movement more accessible to a wider audience. Because, for us at Food from the Forest, food forests and their pioneers are a symbol of the great food transition from the bottom up.
Episodes
Jelle Fekkes
Episode 20, 26-12-2022
In the final episode of season 2022, we talk with Jelle Fekkes. As a landscape architect, he has developed into a food forest designer, although he likes to call himself a systems thinker. It is important to him that we give the makeability idea of modernism its proper place in our landscape, but also that we apply Vitruvius' three starting points (functionality, soundness and beauty) in our designs. As a teacher, he encourages people to get to work in their own environment without becoming too dogmatic.
Madelon Oostwoud
Episode 19, 12-12-2022
Looking for food forest literature in the Netherlands, you can't ignore Madelon Oostwoud's books. In her publications, she manages to combine practical and useful information about creating and managing food forests and food forest edges with beautiful illustrations of her own hand. She talks about how drawing helps in making a design, about how she taught Amsterdamers how to compost in her small backyard, and of course about her own food forest Schellinkwoud.
Marc Buiter
Episode 18, 28-11-2022
Marc Buiter calls himself a sustainability generalist. That sounds very innocuous, but in his case it means a lifetime of hard fighting to make agriculture more sustainable. And he prefers to fight at a certain level. So that it at least makes some headway.
A podcast with an impressive man who is sure to make you think big.
Max de Corte
Episode 17, 14-11-2022
Max de Corte has never actually "become" anything, but through many jobs, ever new startups, urban agriculture, transitiontowns and very early introduction to permaculture, he has become, of course, one of the country's great food agriculture experts.
In this podcast, he tells his uniquely interesting life story and lards it richly with a refreshing vision of the future.
Jeroen Kruit
Episode 16, 31-10-2022
Scientific research on the many yields of food forests is difficult. Not only because virtually all food forests are young and all different, but also because you're talking about multi-year research, and that's a problem by definition. Scientists who buckle down in this for years we call heroes. On top of that, Jeroen Kruit is better able than anyone to connect and strengthen all the different trends and research within the food forest world.
Weruschca Kirkegaard
Episode 15, 17-10-2022
In this conversation, we quickly move beyond the topic of food forests and also internationally. Weruschca is from Denmark, has been a lifelong entrepreneur, worked for many years as an interior stylist and in the food sector, and from a very personal motivation has been bringing all that experience, energy and qualities to the world of permaculture and especially international and large-scale regenerative landscape design for several years now.
Malika Cieremans
Episode 14, 3-10-2022
In the category of food forest pioneers, you can safely call Malika a Pioneer. She has been concerned with trees, subsistence living, native populations, food and ecological agriculture since she studied forestry in the 1990s. She has traveled extensively and seen large forests and both vital and many forms of impoverished ecosystems. She now translates that experience into her current work and research on food forests. This talk could have gone on for hours. But even in these 54 minutes, you get a lot from her unique perspective on life, health and our future on this planet.
Bastiaan Rooduijn
Episode 13, 19-9-2022
Bastiaan can't be pigeonholed into one. He is a plant nut, food forest builder, ecologist, designer and researcher, but above all a very driven ideologue full of thoughtful and very particular visions of his own. He is our youngest interviewee, but having been involved with nature and plants almost since childhood, we certainly did not experience his opinions as young. Bastiaan thinks deeply about the landscape, science, nature and agriculture. So he is -in short- a real pioneer and a scientist at heart who should definitely not be missed in this podcast.
Piet Moerman and Hilde Eylenbosch
Episode 12, 5-9-2022
This extraordinary Belgian couple who have been living and working together for a lifetime changed course drastically and extremely well a few years ago. They quit their careers as biotechnologists, bought 4.5 hectares of agricultural land and are developing various permaculture and agroforestry systems in such a way that they are scientifically verifiable. They want to inspire and convince farmers, scientists and policy makers in Belgium with the real facts and figures of these innovative agricultural systems.
Martijn Ballemans
Episode 11, 22-8-2022
Having grown up in a Vinex neighborhood, and changed course after a crazy trip around the world, Martijn Ballemans is now a much sought-after permaculture and food forest educator. Not only does he know a lot about the content, but because of his background in education he also knows about didactics and teaching methods. Our conversation was about choices, about the future, about agriculture and perhaps above all about dreams with focus.
Sjef van Dongen
Episode 10, 8-8-2022
Sjef has a unique, energetic and positive view on the food transition. This tenth podcast is therefore bursting with great ideas and delicious one-liners. But our conversation also went into great depth. Just as easily, actually. Where does his vision come from and how did he build his companies? How did his thinking grow? And how does Sjef look at the future and his role therein?
Slogans like 'One Planet, Plant it' and 'People can't go from straight to round in one go' already show that Sjef himself is completely round and at the same time simply reaches out to everyone who thinks straight and leads them to a fantastic green future.
Arne Driessen
Episode 9, 25-7-2022
How do we make the world of the future financially possible? How do we keep agriculture and food forests in particular profitable and within the human scale? How do we teach entrepreneurs and financiers to think differently about impact, interest and exits? Arne can not only talk about this in a fascinating way, he also puts his money where his mouth is. Together with his mother, he invests the family fortune in a way that helps food forest entrepreneurs and growers in surprisingly beautiful entrepreneurial ventures on their way to profitable, healthy businesses.
Vincent Bogaart
Episode 8, 11-7-2022
Vincent is able to build unique bridges. He grew up in nature, but also has extensive experience in the world of chemistry and finance. He speaks the language of all these worlds. But, best of all, he not only talks, but has embarked on a path in which he lives, works and eats entirely according to his vision of the future. In search of a way of life in which we humans once again fit within the possibilities of the planet.
Heleen Eshuis
Episode 7, 27-6-2022
You start a food forest for the next 400 years and therefore for all generations of the future. Starting with the children of today. Heleen Eshuis has a very personal vision of food forests, and with her foundation Bosnodig, and the first food forest in Voorst, wants to reconnect children and people with the flavors and beautiful diversity of nature
Liesbeth van Bemmel
Episode 6, 13-6-2022
Liesbeth has a unique story to tell within the food forest world for two reasons. First of all, she has a legal background and is excellent at navigating the world of policy and regulation. And then she has managed to establish her food forest with certain ease in the middle of the flat green heart of the Netherlands. Food forest connoisseurs then know that she has pulled off something very special! Her mission is to guide more and more pioneers from a big green heart, so that they will make the path more passable for the next generation.
Sabine Philips
Episode 5, 30-5-2022
Sabine Philips connects. Centuries of estate history with modern food forests; spiritual yoga with practical farming; distant travels with simple living. And she so easily takes everyone on a journey with her. Friends from the city, neighbors from the village, other tenants of the estate, the complex family and now you, the listener, to a very attractive food forest concept. In the middle of the Dalf forest in Overijssel.
Wouter van Eck
Episode 4, 16-5-2022
Almost every speaker in this podcast names him as a great inspiration. But, by what and by whom was Wouter van Eck himself inspired? How did he get the idea to buy a field one day and plant food forest Ketelbroek on it? Of course, we also asked him about his vision for the future, but we pretty much dwelled on his great love: the insanely beautiful magic of the two most powerful processes on this planet: photosynthesis and the soil fungal web process and what those processes actually mean.
Martijn Aalbrecht
Episode 3, 2-5-2022
Martijn Aalbrecht has been looking for sustainable ways to live his life for more than 15 years and discovered the food forest while doing it. How did he get from new housing development, a good job at a bank and with a young family in tow to where he is today? A sought-after lecturer and consultant on food forests and plant propagation. And how does he see the future of food forests in the Netherlands?
Evelyn Derksen
Episode 2, 18-4-2022
Evelyn Derksen is a designer, teacher, landscape architect, late bloomer, plant nut, and through her active participation, from the very beginning, in Stichting Voedselbosbouw Nederland now designer of almost all the large food forests of the Netherlands. What is her story and her vision for the food forest landscape of the Netherlands?
Frank Gorter and Marieke Karssen
Episode 1, 7-4-2022
Before talking to other food forest pioneers, Marieke and Frank have a good talk. Why did they start this? And they don't just mean the podcast, but their enthusiasm for food forests as the answer to so many transition issues at once. When did they first hear about it? And what happened next? Or didn't? And how do they view the future of agriculture, food supply, social issues and, of course, food forests themselves.
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Who is (not) participating in this podcast?
We, Frank and Marieke, had been walking around with the vague idea 'we're going to make a podcast' for quite a long time. There were also some students who gave it a shot and after the webinar in November 2021 even more people said that we could do this. And then we did it.
We bought our own equipment, made our own investments in how to do it properly and all that without any kind of income. In our own time. The same goes for all the food forest pioneers who are guests in our episodes.
We are doing this because we are convinced that especially at this time of development of food forests and new forms of agriculture and forestry, it is important to ask some big questions. How did we get here, what is here and where are we going? And, are food forests indeed going to provide the answers that are so desperately hoped for? And, how can we get more people to think about those big questions? A podcast is a very suitable tool for this.
But, we are certainly grateful for any help. A sponsor who is compatible with the content of Food from the Forest, and this podcast, and wants to contribute to making it possible is very welcome. In that case, please feel free to contact us.
Want to learn more about food forests?
At Voedsel uit het Bos you will find a lot of free knowledge. About what food forests are... and are not, about how you can fill them in thematically and what the budget and plant list can be. Even better is if you join the platform and participate with your food forest in the citizen science food forest monitoring system. In this way, we can build up the evidence that food forests will indeed deliver on their promises about climate resilience, CO2 storage and a profitable harvest.
Want to learn more about food forests? Then take a look at our courses.