Jim Gale at AUREA: Grow Food Instead of Lawns

Jim Gale paid a quarter of a million dollars to have a franchise document drawn up, read all 330 pages of it, and threw the stack in the trash. What replaced it runs three or four pages, with no patents, no non-competes and no NDAs.

He founded Food Forest Abundance, and he opened his AUREA I talk with a promise: over the next thirty-five minutes he would hand the room the solution to the world's biggest problems in actionable detail. The solution was the grass outside their houses.

What Jim Gale means by growing food instead of lawns

There are 44 million acres of lawn in the United States, and by Gale's account the lawn absorbs more poisons, more chemicals and more human labor than any other crop while feeding nobody. His proposal is to convert half of it, at homes, corporations, schools and churches, into regenerative edible landscapes that take less maintenance than the grass they replace.

The growing he teaches is mostly perennial, which is why the maintenance argument holds. "A macadamia nut tree or an apple tree or a pear or a peach or a plum takes the same amount of maintenance as the oak tree that's in your yard right now," he said. Then he asked who grows the tree, and answered it himself: "I don't grow the tree. Nature, God, source. The tree grows itself." He makes room for annual crops too, because he believes households need food on a shorter timeline than an orchard provides. He has been at this for fourteen years, and the tagline he has used the whole time is the title of the talk: grow food instead of lawns.

Why he changed his obsession into a joyful obsession

Gale spent years driven by what he calls scarcity: worry, fear and lack about what was being done to the world's soil and food. About two years before the talk, after listening to Alan Watts, he switched the fuel. "That little tweak, that energetic shift, made all the difference," he told the room, because he stopped approaching the work as an emergency and started approaching it as a game he wanted to play.

The scarcity had a source. In 2007 he was living in Costa Rica, having sold a mortgage company that did about $1.3 billion in sales in three and a half years. He lived on a boat for a year. "I realized at that time that the money that had been my previous goal was not the answer to the void that I had felt in my body." Around the same time his first two daughters, Mia and Sayla, were born, and he came to the conclusion that the way we treat the Earth's resources is unsustainable. His line about it is flat and unarguable: "All unsustainable systems fail. That's the nature of the word."

Two quotes did the rest of the work. Bill Mollison, the co-originator of permaculture: "Though the problems of our world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple." And Napoleon Hill, whose conclusion after a lifetime studying successful people was that whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Gale pairs both with the Sanskrit idea of lila, the divine game, and treats the whole project as a puzzle rather than a rescue mission.

How much work a food forest actually takes

A food forest is designed to expand without you. Gale asked a friend named Chad, who grows 300 species of edible and medicinal plants in his yard in northern Minnesota, what would happen if he simply walked away for ten or thirty years. Chad's answer was that the birds, the wind, the rain and the animals were already carrying the seeds out past the boundary into the surrounding forest.

That Minnesota yard produces enough in two to three months of harvest to live on for the year, by Chad's account. At Galt's Landing in Florida, Gale's own site, the base soil is sand. There are three food forests there planted about nine, thirteen and eighteen months before the talk, which he describes as walking through time. He is blunt about the objections he hears constantly, the brown thumb and the black thumb and the no time and the no space. The job in front of you is building soil, and someone in your area already knows how to help you do it.

Why he threw out a 330-page franchise agreement

Gale built Food Forest Abundance as a cooperative rather than a franchise, and the document that governs it is three or four pages long, based on the voluntary exchange of value. He had already spent a quarter of a million dollars on the 330-page franchise version. "It made me sick to my stomach. I threw the pile of [expletive] in the trash."

What the open structure bought him was speed. At the time of the talk the organization was operating in fifteen countries and almost every US state, with 43 designers producing yield-producing, low-maintenance permaculture landscapes and 140 cooperative partners around the world. His stated goal was 400 designers within a year. "We have no patents. We have no non-competes. We have no NDAs. None of that BS." The reach came partly from Del Bigtree, who helped launch the effort after Gale wrote to him arguing that permaculture is a proven solution with a way to scale.

What Galt's Landing and the Freedom Farm Academy are

Galt's Landing is an off-grid community Gale is building in St. Cloud, Florida, with bees, off-grid utilities and a different relationship to land ownership. When people ask what the HOA dues are, he tells them there are none, because the land is treated as the community's second greatest asset after its energy rather than as a liability. The community shares the profits its land produces.

The Freedom Farm Academy is the replicable version, built on half an acre. It stacks five functions in one place: local service, permaculture design and installation, local education, local supply and local inspiration. Gale says the last one carries the most weight. "When people experience what's possible, it blows their paradigm away," because the visitor stops asking whether it can be done and starts asking when they start. He does not want the change mandated. "We don't force the change. We don't mandate the change. We inspire the change by demonstrating what's possible."

What he told the room to put in place first

Gale's practical instruction was to secure food, water and a way to get energy, especially in a cold climate, and then to find the people nearby who are aware and capable of helping. The food supply chains are already coming apart, and he says so in the present tense. That reading is his, and he tells the room to prepare for it rather than to debate it.

He refuses to run the preparation on fear. A doctor who had served jail time visited him the day before and warned him repeatedly to be careful, and Gale said he could feel the fear in the man. His response was a metaphor about vampires. "Fear is the open doorway. Fear is the ultimate control mechanism of the slave master." The way he transmutes it is by focusing on service, which he treats as a practical strategy rather than a sentiment. He also separates fear from clear sight: "I don't believe in fear. It's an absolute illusion. I believe in awareness."

Why he would rather inspire BlackRock than shame it

Gale took criticism for approaching BlackRock directly, and his defense was arithmetic. He told the room BlackRock moved $21 trillion last year, a figure he attributes to the firm, and that five percent of it, roughly a trillion dollars, would fund a million Freedom Farm Academies worth a million dollars each. With fewer than 10,000 cities in the world, that is 100 demonstration sites, nurseries and education centers per city.

The reason he goes to the institution rather than around it is that institutions are staffed by people. "The people of BlackRock, they're people. They can be inspired. The people in the military, they're people. They can be inspired." He argues that shaming people who already suspect they are not producing value only deepens the paralysis. So he reframes the offer in the currency those people actually want. "Power is in the creation of life, not in the destruction of life." If they want power, show them how building life produces more of it.

He closed on economics. Adam Smith held that an economy is strong when everyone pursues what is best for themselves. Gale's reading of John Nash is that the upgrade was one word: everyone pursuing what is best for themselves and others produces a stronger economy still, and in a system of voluntary exchange the person who serves the most receives the most. Then he stopped teaching and gave the room its assignment. "Love and have an awesome day. And grow some food."

Watch the full talk above and learn more about Jim Gale's work.

Frequently asked questions

What is Food Forest Abundance?

The company Jim Gale founded to design and install edible perennial landscapes in place of lawns. At the time of his AUREA I talk it was operating in fifteen countries and almost every US state, with 43 permaculture designers and 140 cooperative partners. He built it as a cooperative rather than a franchise, governed by a three or four page agreement with no patents, non-competes or NDAs.

How much lawn is there in the United States?

Gale told the AUREA I audience there are 44 million acres of lawn in the United States alone, and that lawn takes more poisons, chemicals and human resources than any other crop while producing no food for humans. His proposal is to convert half of it, at homes, businesses, schools and churches, into regenerative edible landscapes that require less maintenance than grass does.

What is Galt's Landing?

An off-grid community Jim Gale is building in St. Cloud, Florida, on Florida sand. It has bees, off-grid utilities and three food forests planted roughly nine, thirteen and eighteen months before his AUREA I talk, which he describes as walking through time. There are no HOA dues, because the community treats its land as a profit-sharing asset rather than a shared expense.

What is a Freedom Farm Academy?

A half-acre site that stacks five functions together: local service, permaculture design and installation, local education, local supply and local inspiration. Gale calls local inspiration the most important of the five, because people who walk through a working food forest stop treating it as a theory. Each academy doubles as a nursery, a demonstration site and a teaching space, and he intends them to be financially self-sustaining.

What does Jim Gale tell people to prepare?

Food, water and a way to generate energy, especially in cold climates, plus a local community of people who are both aware and able to help. His reading is that food supply chains are already failing, and he frames preparation as awareness rather than fear. He calls fear the open doorway and the control mechanism of a slave master, and says service is what transmutes it.