Maybe I’m a cynic. I’ve got a small allotment in a subtropical area. I’ve got almost 40 trees planted. I would never refer to it as a forest. I think if you are managing something as a food system, forest isn’t the right word. Every tree, bush or plant, on my property is intentionally planted. They all serve some purpose. And yes, it is a system. But forest just like, its not what it is. It seems like a value signal, and pretending you can just put plants out there and not manage them to get results, is just ridiculous.
That all being said, I did get to bring in bananas, lilikoi, papaya, a couple hand fulls of calamansi, enough eggplant to make people avoid you because every time you see them you hand them an eggplant, all this morning. You can absolutely manage a property to be a valuable and productive food system. But everyone I know who manages their land as a ‘food forest’, they get utterly laughable yields. Food plants, almost all of them, are the product of thousands of years of genetic cultivation, and their productivity is based on being exposed to human management.