What is Agroforestry?
Agroforestry is an integration of woody perennials into farming systems. Trees on the pastures, homegardens, alley cropping, windbreaks and shelterbelts, living fences – these are some examples of agroforestry practises you can find around the world. Agroforestry is a remarkable land-use system that is environmentally friendly and at the same time maintaining or increasing the productivity of the land. Trees have fantastic abilities to protect our landscapes and provide environmental services – they attract pollinators, conserve soil health, stabilize soils, minimize nutrient runoff, retain water in the landscape, and increase biodiversity. All of that without losing agricultural productivity.
Why is agroforestry better than monoculture?
- Improve yield and productivity
- Diversified farm enterprises
- Reduce use of fertilizers and pesticides
- Maximise production
- Reduce soil erosion
- Improve soil health
- Increase pollinator and wildlife habitat
- Increase biodiversity
- Improves micro-climates
…and it is just prettier than monoculture
Brief history of agroforestry
Cultivating trees and agricultural crops in intimate combination with one another is an ancient practice that farmers have used throughout the world. There are innumerable examples of traditional land-use practices involving the combined production of trees and agricultural species on the same piece of land in many parts of the world.
In Europe, until the Middle Ages, it was the general custom to clear-fell degraded forest, burn the slash, cultivate food crops for varying periods on the cleared area, and plant or sow trees before, along with, or after sowing agricultural crops.
In tropical America many societies have simulated forest conditions to obtain the beneficial effects of the forest ecosystem. For example, in Central America, it has been a traditional practice for a long time for farmers to plant an average of two dozen species of plants on plots no larger than one-tenth of a hectare. A farmer would plant coconut or papaya with a lower layer of bananas or citrus, a shrub layer of coffee or cacao, annuals of different stature such as maize, and finally a spreading ground cover such as squash.
In Asia, the Hanunoo of the Philippines practiced a complex and somewhat sophisticated type of “shifting” cultivation. In clearing the forest for agricultural use, they deliberately spared certain trees which, by the end of the rice-growing season, provided a partial canopy of new foliage to prevent excessive exposure of the soil to the sun. Trees were an indispensable part of the Hanunoo farming system and were either planted or preserved from the original forest to provide food, medicines, construction wood, and cosmetics. Similar farming systems have also been common in many other parts of the humid lowland tropics of Asia.
Text from the book “An Introduction to Agroforestry” by P.K. Ramachandran Nair. You can download the full book from the ICRAF website.
“There is no doubt about it, and it will certainly be confirmed by unbiased observations that in the tree-field economy the soil-power and freshness, and thus the fertility, are maintained longer and better than in bare fields, where even with all sorts of artificial fertilizers fertility becomes less and less. The necessity and the beneficial influence of the protective clothing of the soil by larger vegetables (trees) is unmistakable everywhere, with an unbiased view of nature.”
Anonymous, in “Die Holzzucht außerhalb des Waldes“ (Wood Farming outside the Forest), 1856. Illustration in the book by Eugen Neureuther
