Discovering LIVINGAGRO, Episode 2: Understanding the concept of “Agroforestry”

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“Agroforestry is the best way to improve our land productivity, and the best link between environment and economy.”
Fatimata Niang Diop, Researcher, Senegal

Let’s discover a new central protagonist term within our LIVINGAGRO project, AGROFORESTRY!

Following to a definition by the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), World Agroforestry is “the interaction of agriculture and trees.... This comprises trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes, farming in forests and along forest margins and tree-crop production.
Agroforestry is agricultural and forestry systems that try to balance various needs:

  1. produce trees for timber and other commercial purposes;
  2. produce a diverse, adequate supply of nutritious foods..;
  3. ensure the protection of the natural environment...".

More in detail, Agroforestry as a practice of integrating woody vegetation with crop and animal systems, benefits agriculture, forestry and related stakeholders with a sustainable land management, with multiple ecological and economic interactions. As such, agroforestry systems can be integrated with a set of practices to produce biological resources and sustainable methods of food, wood, and fiber production and provide a wide range of ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, water regulation and habitat provision for biodiversity and landscape amelioration. While, at local scale, it can benefit farmers, landowners and nature conservation efforts, at larger scale, it can help the European Union to accelerate the deployment of a sustainable European bio-economy towards the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as objectives for the Paris Agreement. However, this requires research proposals and results tested with silvo-arable and silvo-pastoral agroforestry systems designed mixed with agricultural and forestry practices to demonstrate their management, production and profitability. Such knowledge should then benefit and reach end-users to facilitate the correct implementation of optimal and beneficial practices within a European bio-economy development context.

Learn more about World Agroforestry @ at the dedicated webpage of the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF)

 

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