A young kokum (Garcinia indica) fruit, an example edible and medicinal crop suitable for participatory domestication to improve rural livelihoods.

Crop of turmeric growing between rows of fruit trees in Kona, Hawaii.

Living fence of gliricidia cuttings planted along field crop boundary in Chanthaburi, Thailand.

Quesungual agroforestry is the production of annual staple crops (maize, beans, and sorghum) in the understory of dispersed trees.

Introduction

Over 10 million families in Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua) are subsistence hillside farmers who grow their own food, primarily maize and beans: They face serious challenges to be able to produce enough to feed their families; most own 0.5-4 hectares of highly degraded hillsides (80% of the soils are degraded) (1), which is farmed using traditional farming techniques of slash and burn or more recently slash and chemicals. They are food insecure, having high levels of chronic malnutrition. It is estimated that farmers make a loss two years out five from maize production and studies show that rural families have incomes less than expenditures (2). It is no accident that this is a region of high levels of food insecurity (3) the rural population face an even more serious threat and that is climate variability. This region is one of the world’s most susceptible to growing climate instability (4) and studies indicate that yields are threatened to decline by 30% over the next thirty years (5).

As well as directly providing edible products, agroforestry trees support food production by a range of other means, including by providing shade and support for crops that need it, supporting animal production and improving soil fertility.

Introduction

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 (Garrity 2004); but their role is not always fully acknowledged in development policies and practices, reflecting the difficult-to-measure, diverse pathways by which trees affect people’s lives. Women who are unable to afford high-cost technologies due to severe cash and credit constraints often favour relatively low-input agroforestry options (Kiptot and Franzel 2012).

Tree-crop based systems are better able than some other production systems to regenerate soil conditions, such as soil organic matter levels and soil structure.

Introduction