IUAF

🌿 Turning restoration into opportunity

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched, earlier this year, the regional project “Greening Agroforestry Economies: Strengthening Non-Wood Forest Product Chains and Smallholder Cooperatives” in Hammamet, Tunisia.

Focusing on high-potential non-wood forest products such as carob, the initiative will support cooperatives, strengthen value chains, and create green jobs for rural communities, particularly women and youth, across the Near East and North Africa region.

By linking forest landscape restoration with sustainable bioeconomy development, the project aims to enhance livelihoods while strengthening ecosystem resilience.

https://www.fao.org/neareast/news/details/fao-launches-regional-project-to-green-agroforestry-economies-through-non-wood-forest-products/en

Countries involved include , , , , and , working together to advance sustainable forest-based economies.

FAO Launches Regional Project to Green Agroforestry Economies through Non-Wood Forest Products Hammamet, Tunisia 29 January 2026, FAO officially launched the two-year regional project Greening Agroforestry Economies Strengthening Non-Wood Forest Produc...

Farms once planned wind at the landscape scale.

Tree networks slowed air, protected soil, and quietly stabilized growing conditions across generations.

Then fields opened.

Mechanization favored uninterrupted space. Tree lines became obstacles instead of infrastructure.

Windbreaks weren’t decoration. They were climate tools embedded into design.

Today, microclimate management is returning through agroforestry, regenerative design, and climate adaptation strategies.

The shift reveals something important: efficiency changes environment — even when yields rise.

Some infrastructure is invisible until it disappears.

If given the choice, would you plant trees that machinery must work around?

What if farms could be the solution to our climate, biodiversity, and health crisis? 🩺 What if food truly became our medicine? 💥

This is the Ferme du Bec Hellouin, a permaculture farm haven where nature and humanity become one again.

Farmers are the solution to our biggest challenges and while not every farmer can become the next Bec Hellouin, every farmer (or gardener) can adopt some of these basic principles.

* Don't fertilize the soil but feed the soil

* Phase out the cides! (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides,...)

* Stop growing food in only 2 dimensions, but start growing in 3 dimensions

* Create an ecological network that does the heavy lifting for you

* Use complex cover crops to pump carbon into the soil to feed the soil organisms

* Cover the soil and disturb it as little as possible

These basics can be done on a very small scale, but also on hundreds of hectares.

👉🏼 What can you do? Grow your own veggies or buy them from a farm who's using these principles

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Thanks Rob Avis for posting this & making the world a better place through your regeneration work

Beautiful artwork by Rosanna Morris Prints