Agroforestry Ppt Download

Within a watershed, agroforestry practices can resemble a living patchwork quilt that connects headwater forests through agricultural lands to urban areas and on to the sea; providing cleaner water for communities - both locally and downstream - and other public benefits, such as those mentioned above.

The department released the USDA Agroforestry Strategic Framework (PDF, 562 KB) to create a road-map for advancing the science, practice, and application of agroforestry throughout the country. USDA's agroforestry efforts have been mostly associated with the USDA National Agroforestry Center. The new Strategic Framework strengthens coordination about agroforestry across the Department.

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The USDA Agroforestry Executive Steering Committee is a high-level steering committee that coordinates and helps to set priorities for USDA-wide implementation of the Strategic Framework. Most of USDA's agencies have at least one branch, office, program, or project relevant to agroforestry. Some agencies have many. For example, the Agricultural Research Service conducts research at 100 locations across the country, and at least seven of them have agroforestry activities currently underway.

The USDA Interagency Agroforestry Team includes staff from the eight agencies listed above. This team works together to share information about agroforestry opportunities and resources that are available to the public through USDA programs.

The USDA National Agroforestry Center (NAC) in Lincoln, Nebraska is a long standing partnership between two arms of the U.S. Forest Service, Research & Development and State & Private Forestry, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). NAC's mission - "to accelerate the application of agroforestry through a national network of partners" - is accomplished by conducting research and training, developing technologies and tools, and supporting demonstrations. NAC was authorized in the 1990 Farm Bill and began in 1992 as a coupled FS research and technology transfer effort with NRCS joining as a sponsor in 1995. NAC's technical assistance and education work includes developing general interest and technical agroforestry resources, supporting agroforestry networks, and providing technical and program support to USDA Agencies. NAC's current research activities focus on understanding the drivers effecting agroforestry adoption, mapping agroforestry systems across the U.S. (trees outside forests), developing economic calculators for various agroforestry practices, and better quantifying the ecosystems services that agroforestry systems offer (climate mitigation and adaptation, wildfire fuel reduction, pollination, water quality and quantity impacts, and more).

Under the new Strategic Framework, agroforestry is being strengthened across the Department. So, while the importance of NAC's work continues to grow, its activities will be bolstered by the programs and activities of at least eight USDA agencies, Department-wide coordination and priorities set by the USDA Agroforestry Executive Steering Committee.

Additionally, agroforestry practices are being promoted to respond to issues that are common around the globe - increasing food security, reducing risk and improving income opportunities through diversification, promoting wildlife habitat, and providing critical ecosystem services.

Agroforestry systems are flexible and can be designed to meet a wide range of economic, environmental and social objectives. While agroforestry may look different in tropic and temperate environments, it is relevant both places.

Agroforestry-like practices have been in use in North America for a long time but were not called agroforestry. Native Americans had many complex management systems to produce their food, baskets, homes, clothes, fuel, medicine, and more, and early European settlers followed a style of agriculture that integrated trees, crops, and livestock as they worked with the native woodland vegetation and agriculture crops. However, this approach essentially disappeared during the 20th century with advances in separate research programs in agriculture and forestry that led to our current separate approaches and disciplines. There are still examples of integrated approaches being used by farmers and forest managers, including Tribal members, and a rising interest in agroforestry from people around the country.

Periodic agricultural and weather disasters, such as the Dust Bowl era in the 1930's and more recently, Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast, have prompted renewed focus on agroforestry techniques in certain regions of the country. After the Dust Bowl, windbreaks and shelterbelts became more common across the central U.S., and increased interest in water quality in the 1970s and 1980s brought greater attention to riparian forest buffers as ways to mitigate agricultural runoff of both sediment and nutrients. Thus, the linear agroforestry practices of windbreaks, shelterbelts, and riparian forest buffers have been promoted and supported through USDA conservation programs, and researched by USDA-supported scientists for many decades.

On the other hand, agroforestry production systems such as silvopasture, forest farming, and alley cropping are newer areas of focus for USDA. While NRCS conservation practice standards have been created for silvopasture, alley cropping, and forest farming at a national level, they have not been adopted and adapted by all state and local offices.

There is a continuing need to assess the amount of agroforestry research and extension work occurring across the U.S. However, for a start, Agroforestry: USDA Reports to America, FY 2011-12 - Comprehensive Version (PDF, 7.0 MB) has an extensive list of agroforestry research and extension projects that USDA supported in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. The report also contains a list of 200 publications written by USDA-supported scientists during those two years.

Regional and practice-specific agroforestry working groups are forming across the country. These groups of university personnel, extension advisors, USDA and state agricultural and forestry employees, producers, students, and business owners are serving as catalysts for agroforestry expansion across the country.

Because of how diverse agroforestry systems are, there is no one-size fits all. Agroforestry systems are implemented on farms and ranches across the U.S. and on all farm sizes and types. Currently, the most comprehensive statistic for agroforestry adoption in the U.S. is from the 2017 Census of Agriculture, which found that 30,853 farms use agroforestry. The USDA National Agroforestry Center is conducting a national survey to better understand the census statistic, which aggregated all five agroforestry practices together. National-level statistics will be available in 2023 for how may farms practice agroforestry by practice type, acres in that practice, establishment methods, management practices, crops and products sold, and more. These data will be made available on the USDA National Agroforestry Center website.

Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos, etc.) are deliberately used on the same land-management units as agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence. In agroforestry systems there are both ecological and economical interactions between the different components. Agroforestry can also be defined as a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape, diversifies and sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels. In particular, agroforestry is crucial to smallholder farmers and other rural people because it can enhance their food supply, income and health.Agroforestry systems are multifunctional systems that can provide a wide range of economic, sociocultural, and environmental benefits.

Because agroforestry integrates multiple natural components and is at the crossroads of tradition and modernity, it necessarily brings together people from diverse fields of knowledge: agronomists, animal care specialists, landscape planners, foresters, economists, soil analysts and many more. This diversity of disciplines is certainly a strength, but its complexity also represents a challenge, notably in terms of coordination and communication.

The agroforestry strategic framework (PDF, 562 KB) is a roadmap for agroforestry services USDA provides to landowners through its numerous programs. As such, it plays a critical role in advancing agroforestry to enhance the nation's economy and its agricultural landscapes, watersheds, and communities.

Agroforestry (or agro-sylviculture) is a land use management system in which combinations of trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops or pastureland.[1] Agroforestry combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems. There are many benefits to agroforestry such as increasing farm profitability.[2] In addition, agroforestry helps to preserve and protect natural resources such as controlling soil erosions, creating habitat for the wildlife, and managing animal waste.[3] Benefits also include increased biodiversity, improved soil structure and health, reduced erosion, and carbon sequestration.[4]

Trees in agroforestry systems can also produce wood, fruits, nuts, and other useful products with economic and practical value. Agroforestry practices are especially prevalent in the tropics,[5][6] especially in subsistence smallholdings areas [7] with particular importance in sub-Saharan Africa.[8] Due to its multiple benefits, for instance in nutrient cycle benefits and potential for mitigating droughts, it has been adopted in the USA and Europe .[9][10][11]

According to Paul Wojtkowski, the theoretical base for agroforestry lies in ecology,[12] or agroecology. Agroecology encompasses diverse applications such as: improved nutrient and carbon cycling; water retention of soils; biodiverse habitats; protection from pest, disease and weed outbreaks; protection of soils from water and wind erosion, etc.[13] From this perspective, agroforestry is one of the three principal agricultural land-use sciences. The other two are agriculture and forestry.[14] e24fc04721