In forest farming, high-value specialty crops are cultivated under the protection of a forest canopy that has been modified and manged to produce This is neither forestry nor farming in the traditional sense. It is an agroforestry practice characterized by intentional, integrated,
intensive and interactive management of an existing forested ecosystem wherein forest health is of paramount concern. Forest farm management principles constitute an ecological approach to forest management through efforts to find a balance between conservation of native biodiversity and wildlife habitat within the forest and limited, judicious utilization of the forest's varied resources. It attempts to bring secondary growth forests that have been overused and dsrupted back into ecological balance through careful, intentional manipulation over time, emulating natural processes to restore original, natural diversity of species. In some instances, the intentional introduction of species for use as botanicals, medicinals or food products is added in combination with native species. The five categories of specialty crops are foods (mushrooms, nuts, vegetables, honey from bee plants, herbs, fruits, edible flowers, sap products), botanical products (e.g. Broom, liquorice), decoratives (e.g. mosses, ferns, Eucalyptus), handicrafts (basketry materials), and wood products (fuelwood, charcoal, specialty woods for carving, incense, garden mulches from clipped wooss and coppice). The methods of forest farming include i. intensive, but cautious thinning of overstocked, suppressed tree stands; and ii. multiple integrated entries to accomplish thinning of healthy trees and shrubs of all ages and species, rather than a monoculture of timber species.
Forest farm management is a type of forest stewardship ethic whose objective is to restore and maintain the health of the forest land's many and varied ecosystems. The benefits include economic benefits (e.g. sale of ginseng, logs, floral decoratives), modification of the ecosystem without ecosystem disruption, and provision of opportunities for shortterm income from existing woodlands. The drawbacks include the higher requirement of entrepreneurial attitude from farmers and landowners, need for research to locate potential buyers of specialty products, and high labour requirement.
