Meet Eric Toensmeier

Photo by Cindy Dyer, http://www.cindydyer.wordpress.com

Eric Toensmeier has spent twenty years exploring edible and useful plants of the world and their use in perennial agroecosystems. He is the author of Perennial Vegetables and co-author of Edible Forest Gardens with Dave Jacke. Both books have received multiple awards, including the American Horticultural Society Garden Book of the Year and ForeWord Magazine Home and Garden Gold Medal Book of the Year Award, Garden Writer’s Association Silver Medal and American Library Association Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Learn more about Eric’s permaculture books and articles.

His current project is promoting perennial farming systems, including agroforestry and perennial staple crops, as a strategy to sequester carbon while restoring degraded lands, and providing food, fuel and income, and ecosystem services. He presents on perennial food production systems to groups ranging from Mexican agronomists, Maya villagers, seed bank directors, urban farmers, and aspiring permaculture entrepreneurs. He teaches in English, Spanish, and Botanical Latin. Learn more about Eric’s presentations and workshops.

Eric is a founding Board member of the Apios Institute for Regenerative Perennial Agriculture and recently founded the Bosque Comestible project, an online Spanish-language user-generated database of useful perennials for Mesoamerica and the Caribbean, with an international team.

Eric ran an urban farm project for Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke Massachusetts, providing access to land and startup assistance for Latino and refugee beginning farmers. He implemented a bilingual participatory design process with farmers, youth, and board members to develop the 30-acre farm site as a cultural agri-tourism destination. As project director he realized the community vision with 25 leasehold farm enterprises, farm store, pig-roasting operation, equestrian business, and cultural events.

His urban garden is a model of how to apply permaculture to a small space with poor soils, featuring over 200 useful perennial and self-seeding species on 1/10 of an acre.

Eric also provides consulting services on various aspects of useful plants, edible landscaping, food forestry enterprises, farm business start-up, perennial polycultures, and the application of permaculture design to economic development.

Contact toensmeier (AT) gmail.com for Eric Toensmeier’s short-form resume or curriculum vitae.