Trees for the Future

Since incorporating in 1989, Trees for the Future (TREES) has planted over 115 million trees by supporting groups of farmers in planting and maintaining Forest Gardens. Forest Gardens consist of thousands of trees that include a variety of fast-growing, fruit, hardwood, and food trees providing families with sustainable food sources, livestock feed, products to sell, fuel wood, and a 400% increase in their annual income in four years.

Protecting our forests and supporting the most vulnerable people on our planet are not mutually exclusive endeavours. TREES’s approach tackles both the health and sustainability of our planet and the health and sustainability of low-income smallholder farming families simultaneously. The Forest Garden approach is simple, scalable, replicable, and evidence-based.

Our planet is losing trees at a rate of 50 soccer fields per minute, mostly occurring in the developing tropics of Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia where hundreds of millions of chronically-hungry, smallholder farming families use destructive and short-sighted agricultural practices. These are also people who are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

“I get more from my two acre Forest Garden than I could get from six acres of peanut crop. My sons have a future now, and as I age, trees will continue to feed my family.” ~ Mate Mbaye, Forest Garden participant in Senegal

FBB shares TREES’ co-commitment to the planet and people. Their program design recognizes that a sustainable, healthy ecosystem is vital for human flourishing and they have 30 years of data that show their program design supports both.