Zach Loeks grew up on a Permaculture homestead outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Working alongside his family he was immersed in Permaculture design and started his own edible landscape company.  Zach received a honours degree in Human Environment and began a journey of research, practice and innovation in edible biodiversity in urban, suburban and rural landscapes.

He started an organic market garden in Ontario, serving over 300 community supported vegetable baskets for over a decade and is a three-time agri-award winning grower. He  is the innovator of edible ecosystem design, a unique system for organized biodiverse land management.  Zach has published three books on food system design and is working on his fourth.  

Zach is the director of the Ecosystem Solution Institute which helps find and fund unique edible ecosystem education sites called EPI (Educate, Propagate, Inspire) Sites, including the pathbreaking Edible Biodiversity Conservation Area (EBCA), a 100-acre living laboratory.  Zach is also a key educator at the online school EcosystemU where his Edible Property Design Master Course and 365 Mentorship Program are available.  Zach works as a designer of edible ecosystems and EPI sites in community green space, farms and homesteads and teaches widely on the subject through schools, conferences and hands-on workshops.  Zach is currently working a on a new program of walking across communities (#WalkAcrossWhere?!) to build awareness for food security, as well as longboarding and biking to help survey key spaces for transition to edible biodiversity and EPI Sites.