The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
- Journal articles
Agroforestry–the integration of trees with annual crop cultivation,livestock production and other farm activities –is a series of land management approaches practised by more than 1.2 billion people worldwide. Integration increases farm productivity when the various components occupy complementary niches and their associations are managed effectively (Steffan Dewenter et al.,2007). Agroforestry systems may range from open parkland assemblages, to dense imitations of tropical rainforests such as home gardens, to planted mixtures of only a few species, to trees planted in hedges or on boundaries of fields and farms, with differing levels of human management of the various components. Agroforestry systems provide a variety of products and services that are important locally, nationally and globally, but their role is not always acknowledged adequately in development policies and practices, possibly reflecting thedifficult to measure, diverse pathways by which they affect peoples’ lives. Relatively low input agroforestry options are often favoured by women who are unable to afford high cost technologies due to severe cash and credit constraints.