Transform flammable fire-hazard brush into fire-resistant, water saving food forests with this easy technology – “Hugel-Swales”. Samyol will teach from his personal experience of creating jobs and improving local ecosystems with Hugel-Swales in Northern California. This workshop will teach you how to make Hugel-Swales for your own land projects or create jobs for your community by offering this essential service to other land stewards. Tips will be shared for boosting valuable vegetable, fruit, cannabis, mushroom, water catching yields, as well as discussions about benefiting surrounding ecosystems and economies with strategic planting, placement and marketing.

Presented By: Samyol Soulfyre

John Valenzuela is a horticulturist, consultant, and permaculture educator.

He has been a lead permaculture design course teacher at the Bullock Family Homestead in Orcas Island, Washington, for 10 years, also having taught in Costa Rica and throughout urban and rural California. His special interests are home gardens, plant propagation, rare fruit, food forests, agroforestry, ethnobotany, and native ecosystems.

After living in Hawai’i for 15 years, he is now based in his original home state of California, where he maintains ornamental and edible landscapes and a small nursery, while sharing his passion for plants. John has served as the chairperson for the Golden Gate Chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Access the abundance of edible plant diversity: from backyard to global resources

Mario will introduce the Community Food Forestry Initiative (CFFI), a national initiative funded by USDA Forest Service Community & Urban Forestry grant. The initiative takes a unique and innovative approach to address the challenge of urban and community tree canopy loss due to re/development by providing planners, developers, policy-makers, designers and practitioners a comprehensive set of resources that integrate food-producing trees and plants into the urban landscape. In addition, it will help raise public and professional awareness around the issue of using urban places to grow food.

Presented By: Mario Yanez

Sunday, September 18th | 4:10 – 4:30 PM | Solar Panel: El Sol

Mario Yanez has dedicated his life’s work to envisioning and inspiring a transition toward life-sustaining, resilient human communities. He has a professional background in finance, information systems and ecology. Mario has several decades of experience applying systems thinking in nonprofits, developing and funding cutting-edge programming. As an educator, Mario creates provocative and relevant active-learning curriculum supportive of a much-needed cultural evolution. As a Permaculture practitioner, he is applying design at various scales, implementing regenerative productive landscapes, enterprises, and organizational and social systems. Mario is native to the Greater Everglades bioregion and is well versed in tropical/sub-tropical food production.

2016 RED Talk Presentation: Community Food Forestry Initiative