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Together with our farming households, we turn degraded agricultural land into productive Food Forests. These food forests sequester significant levels of biodiversity return. Of equal importance is the fact that the harvestable tree products significantly improve the livelihoods of the local farming households.
How do we do it
We have developed a simple method by working with nature rather than against it. We use Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) techniques combined with zero tillage. ANR is a cheap and simple nature-based zero-tillage method to kickstart restoration.
The method only uses a lodging board (a simple wooden plank) to flatten the tough weeds that have established on the degraded soils. By weakening and decomposing the weedy vegetation, soil carbon increases, which retains more moisture. Already existing wildlings are protected and start to grow fast, as they no longer compete with the weedy vegetation. In most cases, these seedlings develop from seeds that were dispersed by birds and other wildlife passing through the weedy fields. This simple technique is accessible for even the poorest farmers, and does not require any external inputs, not even hired labour.
From the second year onwards, economically valuable crops such as coffee, spice trees, and fruit trees can be planted, providing food and income for the local community. Each farmer can choose their own species, and we provide compost, produced in our village-based composting units from locally available inputs. In this way, the young seedlings get a good start.
After three years, biodiversity improves, attracting insects, birds, and mammals that use the area as a safe corridor to move from one forest patch to another. It is also the time when the first harvests begin for the farming households, including coffee berries and fruit trees. After 5–6 years, the restored ecosystem offers various ecosystem services, such as improved water retention and a sustainable source of food and income for the local population. Our biodiversity monitoring increasingly shows large mammals, including tapir, honey bear, and even the Sumatran Tiger. They regularly roam around in the food forest to feed themselves as a more diverse plant and animal life develops.
How the Gula Gula Food Forest Program began
In the early 2000s, Paul Burgers was conducting long-term research on nature-inclusive agriculture in Sumatra, Indonesia, for the World Agroforestry Centre. That time, the local communities repeatedly asked how he planned to use the knowledge they shared and whether he would return to help them overcome poverty.
After returning to the Netherlands and completing his PhD on this research, Paul felt a strong desire to answer their question with a "yes." He aimed to develop a sustainable and profitable forest restoration system that would not only rehabilitate degraded lands but also help local communities improve their livelihoods. His goal was to help communities become self-reliant by helping them connect to premium, sustainable markets for their sustainable products. Nowadays, Paul has begun to import the “regenerative” coffee beans from the farmers, that come from the restored areas.
From the beginning, the financial support has come from the growing interest of the private sector in grassroots carbon offsetting projects. Achieving the Plan Vivo certification in 2020, Paul’s social enterprise CO₂ Operate B.V. bridges sustainability, community empowerment, and innovative business solutions. Profits from the sale of carbon credits, and increasingly coffee as well, are mostly re-invested in Indonesia to scale up restoration efforts with local communities.