The Beacon Food Forest is a community-powered permaculture project that took off in 2009, aiming to create a sustainable model that can support the community with affordable, healthy food, knowledge on growing food and biodiversity, and a sense of belonging in the face of climate change and food security issues. A food forest is a sustainable model that mimics the ecosystem of a natural forest but substitutes certain species with ones that have the same ecological function and are edible to humans.

The project is located on a leisure public land in Seattle, and it is built and maintained entirely by local residents as volunteers. All harvests are open for picking by any passerby, and work is shared by residents and new-comers as a group. By making the project open to all with a clear code of conduct, the project quickly gathered hundreds of residents from different walks of life, contributing tools, skills, and knowledge that can be gathered and passed down to the younger generation.