Deforestation is actively destroying about 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of forest every year. The biggest, most valuable trees are logged for timber. Often the smaller, less valuable trees are left remaining… for a while. Then farmers come along and clear the land for field crops such as soybeans, corn and cassava, because the remaining scrub forest doesn’t have much commercial value. But what if the deforestation process stopped after the large trees were cut? You could use the smaller remaining trees to help regrow a forest more valuable than timber – a food forest that continually produces abundant food indefinitely for generations to come without need for cultivation, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
