Agroforestry Policies Contribute to Sustainable Land Use

Abstract

"Agroforestry includes all practices that deliberately combine trees and shrubs with agricultural crops and/or livestock over time or space. Most countries have practiced agroforestry for centuries. In many parts of the developing world, it is an important form of land use and a major contributor to land use sustainability.

"Yet, because agroforestry is land use between forestry and agriculture, policymakers do not give it the attention it deserves. Here we focus on how agroforestry adds to the sustainable use of many land areas, particularly monocropping of marginal soils and hilly areas. We suggest that policy can encourage agroforestry to improve existing unsustainable land use practices. Readers interested in more information should check other sources.

"We want to make three initial points concerning sustainability: 1. We define sustainable land use as that which produces goods and services while continuing to protect the natural resource base. 2. The goal is to maintain sustainable production of goods and services, not to continue given land-use practices. 3. Since we cannot know whether a land use is sustainable far into the future, the best method is to avoid uses that are clearly unsustainable. For example, land use that promotes excessive soil erosion is obviously not sustainable."