Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Therefore, to anyone who’s contemplating planting trees on a piece of land because they have specific goals for it, as we did – wind protection, privacy, nitrogen fixation, firewood and timber, amenity value, fruit and nuts, even wildlife habitat or carbon sequestration at a stretch – I say don’t be put off by the permaculture purists who insist on natural regeneration. Go for it.
A cereal and beers are now being made with a new variety of perennial grain known as Kernza. Proponents say this marks a significant advance for a new agriculture that borrows from the wild prairie and could help ensure sustainable food production in a warming world.
Van Noordwijk is one of the foremost researchers when it comes to investigating the interplay between climate change and human movements, oftentimes through the lens of agroforestry.
This week on Sea Change Radio, we learn all about agroforestry from Erik Hoffner, an editor at Mongabay. Hoffner takes a look at examples of agroforestry efforts around the globe, examines recent investments into the sector and shows how it stacks up to large, industrial agricultural systems.
The piece of property on which my story takes place had evolved past neglect: it was simply abandoned to the forest. When we looked out the windows of our old home in the early years, we didn’t see fields onto which we could project agrarian dreams, but walls of vegetation that were wild and unwelcoming. If we wanted to make a farm, we would have to cut it into a forest.
Agroforestry — integrating trees into cropland or pastureland — is often discussed as a promising strategy for helping to ease the threat of climate change because trees are particularly good at sucking carbon dioxide from the air and socking it away for the long term.
There are real solutions being modeled out there and we need to remove the political obstacles and financial shackles that keep them from being implemented at the scale that will provide real benefit to people and planet.
As an ambitious program in Colombia demonstrates, combining grazing and agriculture with tree cultivation can coax more food from each acre, boost farmers’ incomes, restore degraded landscapes, and make farmland more resilient to climate change.
Agroforestry combines agricultural and forestry techniques to create more varied productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable approaches to land use.
