ZACHLOEKS

Innovative Food System Designer, Researcher, Author

Zach Loeks is an innovative food system designer, researcher, and author. His solutions in farming, landscaping and agriculture are adaptive responses to the challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity. Zach educates through events, books and courses on the techniques and technologies of edible urban landscaping, pro home gardening and profitable permaculture farming. Zach teaches blackboard design lessons and provides from-the-field video trainings through a Permaculture Video Library and Pro Grower Courses at his his online school: www.ecosystemU.com

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Zach is Walking for Water & Food Security in Guanajuato

Did you know that thousands of communities, millions of people, in Mexico are facing water scarcity? In many areas, water drawn from deep wells contains harmful toxins like arsenic and unsafe levels of fluoride, yet surface water is rarely captured in rain barrels or cisterns. The potential for water catchment, well-placed filtration systems, and gravity irrigation to nourish food forests and gardens is enormous. Zach has walked over 200 kilometers across the Upper Rio Laja watershed, exploring these opportunities firsthand. Organizations like Caminos de Agua are actively working to address these issues. Support them.

Walk across where?! The Upper Rio Laja Watershed!

Follow Zach's Walks #WAW

Edible Ecosystem Design

Gardening like nature intended doesn't need to be messy or inefficient. Ecosystem design is about efficiency and elegance: creating highly organized, biodiverse landscapes using patterned planting. It account for three essential elements: 1) site suitability, 2) guild design 3) and your stewardship goals!

Edible Ecosystem Design is about mimicry of natural ecosystems to create cultural landscapes that are edible, abundant and beautiful.

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Zach Loeks Journey

Hey All,

My name is Zach. I grew up on a Permaculture homestead in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I remember planting strawberries when I was five and building bioswales when I was 10. I started my first landscaping business soon after. Growing food got under my skin, and soon after getting my university degree, I quickly got back into the dirt and started making soil!

I ran a Permaculture Market Garden, serving 300+ Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) baskets, attending two busy urban farmer's markets, provided winter vegetables direct my root cellar as in-cellar-sales events, and was a seed garlic grower selling over 100 varieties across Canada.

My farming career nurtured my innovative nature, drawing upon my roots as a second generation permaculture designer and citizen scientist. This honed my focus on Edible Ecosystem Design as a unique approach to highly-organized and diversified land management for gardens and farms.

My award-winning farm continues to be a place of productivity as my homestead and a living laboratory for my edible ecosystem designs. I work as a designer and consultant to help create edible and biodiverse landscapes for homes, farm and communities.

I hope to catch you in the field or at the blackboard!

For the last five years, the focus of this work has been the development of an Edible Biodiversity Conservation Area (EBCA), a 100-acre experimental farm in Ontario. Over the next five years I will be continuing the development of the EBCA and new living laboratories in communities under the EPI program (Educate, Propagate, Inspire). My research includes unique trials of plant suitability, companion planting and equipment and tool systems for food production.

I am ever curious, and walk, longboard and bike across entire cities and rural areas to "see the land as it is", documenting the obstacles and opportunities in our communities for better landscaping. This Walk Across Where?! campaign is done spontaneously or sponsored by communities- so reach out!

I am the author of The Permaculture Market Garden, The Two-Wheel Tractor Handbook, The Edible Ecosystem Solution and The Garden Tool Handbook. If you love food, you are sure to find great fun and information in these books. My books tell a story of how to grow food sustainably at different scales while drawing upon our intuitive nature as humans to connect to the wild.

All of my teaching can be found in video format as blackboard design lessons and from-the-field trainings at my online school: www.EcosystemU.com