How Agroforestry Can Benefit Agriculture, Food, & the Environment

In its most simple terms, Agroforestry means farming with trees. It is the intentional combining of agriculture with trees to create sustainable, beneficial farming and ranching systems. In agroforestry systems, trees and their products (nuts, fruits, medicinals, timber, fiber) are used to create diversified income streams for the producers and provide other environmental benefits. Well-designed agroforestry means putting the right tree, in the right place, for the right purpose, at the right time.

Indigenous Agroforestry, or tribal agroforestry, has been practiced by tribal and Indigenous communities for millennia and is built upon traditional ecological and cultural knowledge of trees and a socio-ecological relationship with them.

With a pressing need to address climate challenges and restore health to ecosystems, agroforestry is a critical component to holistically managing carbon levels, while also helping to build farm resilience and grow more nutrient-dense foods.

Why We Need Agroforestry

Currently, about 20% of the planet’s surface is declining in productivity, with fertility losses linked to soil erosion, depletion, and pollution. Soils are crucial to managing climate change, as well as growing nutrient-rich foods. Today, one-third of the earth’s soil is degraded. By 2050, this could increase to 90% and degradation and climate change could lead to a 10% reduction in crop yields globally – up to 50% in certain regions.

Now, to address the challenges that the world is facing, it is necessary to revitalize and support agroforestry.

Agroforestry means managing a perennial ecosystem-based farm, instead of just a crop. Prior to widespread monoculture farms and industrial cropping systems – in which fields are cleared of trees and shrubs – producers managed diversified farming systems and trees played a symbiotic role alongside low-lying crops. From its inception, agriculture involved cultivating in and around trees and shrubs.

One important function of an agroforestry system is to restore degraded land and ecosystems. Trees, which are perennials, continuously build deep root systems and robust microbial communities, store carbon undisturbed, and build healthy soils without the need to replant them each year like annuals.

Trees also play a crucial role in carbon drawdown. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis to produce various carbon-based sugars necessary for tree functioning and growth. Every part of a tree stores carbon - from the trunks to the branches, leaves, and roots. Trees play a key role in carbon sequestration, as photosynthesis is one of our oldest and best technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Agroforestry can provide an array of environmental, climate, social, and economic benefits, depending on the species of trees or shrubs planted and the type of practice implemented. Agroforestry practices can enhance crop and livestock production, increase biomass and biodiversity, protect soil, air, and water quality, provide wildlife habitat, and capture more carbon from the air. These benefits not only work to mitigate climate change, but help farmers adapt to rapidly changing environments and build livelihood resilience.

One USDA report found that well-designed agroforestry systems can increase crop yields by as much as 56%, which can raise farm revenue. Agroforestry can also provide diverse revenue streams through tree products such as nuts, fruits, medicinals, fiber, and timber.

Bringing trees back into agriculture is key to restoring soil health, ecological functionality, farmer livelihood, and building a healthy food system.

Agroforestry Practices

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the five recognized practices of agroforestry are 1) alley cropping, 2) windbreaks, 3) riparian buffers, 4) silvopasture, and 5) forest farming (also called multistory cropping). For a management practice to be called agroforestry, it must also be intentional, intensive, integrated, and interactive.

Alley cropping involves growing rows of trees and shrubs to create alleys in which crops are grown. The crops allow for the farmers to have revenue - or a cash flow - until the trees mature and produce a yield. Alley cropping also helps increase soil health and fertility, sequesters carbon, provides shade, and attracts beneficial pollinators.

Windbreaks, also referred to as shelterbelts, were used extensively in the United States in the “Dust Bowl” era of the 1930s to mitigate wind speed. Windbreaks are one or more strips of trees and/or shrubs that are integrated into crop or livestock operations and protect them from wind, dust, and snow while also providing conservation benefits, such as promoting habitat for wildlife and mitigating soil erosion.

Riparian Buffers are strips or lines of trees and shrubs along a waterway, such as a river, stream, or wetland. Riparian buffers can help prevent erosion, filter farm run-off before it enters a waterway, provide habitat for wildlife, and protect crops from floods.

Silvopasture is integrating livestock operations with trees. This can mean bringing the trees to the animals, such as animals grazing in pastures planted with trees, or bringing the animals to the trees, such as grazing them within a managed forest. Trees can reduce heat stress on animals by providing shade, serve as forage or feed for the animals, improve wildlife habitat, reduce wildfire risk, and store carbon.

Forest Farming is the cultivation of food, herbal, medicinal, botanical, and/or decorative crops under existing managed forest canopies. Benefits of forest farming are that multi-layers of crops and animals can be grown to enhance biodiversity and there can be less disturbance to the environment. Forest farming can work to sustain an ecosystem while growing a cash crop.

Indigenous Agroforestry practices include culturally-informed and traditional ecological knowledge-based practices that intentionally and interactively integrate the management of trees, plants, fungi, and animals to serve the needs of Indigenous communities, tribes, and the broader society. The practices can vary between tribes, regions, and ecosystems.

Federal Funding & Programs for Agroforestry

Although cultivated and refined by Indigenous peoples for millennia, agroforestry is common globally but not widely practiced in the United States due to the upfront costs of implementing practices, the time it takes for trees to mature, and the need for more expertise and technical assistance. Less than 2% of US agricultural acres employ agroforestry. A recent boost in federal funding and several proposed additions to the farm bill, however, might help to change that.

Last year, the USDA began distributing funds from the Inflation Reduction Act to adopt climate-smart practices, including agroforestry practices. The USDA’s new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities funding program will invest up to $2.8 billion across 70 projects, including $60 million to advance agroforestry.

In March 2023, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine and Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico reintroduced the Agriculture Resilience Act. If written into the next farm bill – which has been delayed until September 2024 – it would direct the USDA to create three new regional agroforestry centers. Currently, Agroforestry has been led by USDA’s National Agroforestry Center (NAC). Since 1990, NAC has been the only government agency dedicated to advancing agroforestry through on-the-ground research, technical assistance, and demonstration projects across the nation.

The USDA’s Agroforestry Strategic Framework outlines ways to further develop and integrate agroforestry across programs through 2024, including in key farm bill programs. Other initiatives, such as the CRP Agroforestry Initiative, propose establishing a new Agroforestry Initiative within the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program to incentivize enrollment of marginal cropland and pastureland devoted to agroforestry practices. Under this initiative, all agroforestry practices including silvopasture and alley cropping would be eligible for implementation as long as they are ecologically appropriate.

Agroforestry in Arizona

Depending on a farm’s need and the local and regional context, agroforestry can take on many different forms. In the Southwest, agroforestry can look like edible trees, food forests, or a system of native trees (e.g., Mesquite, Oak, Pinyon, Elderberry) that provide shade for plants like prickly pear, agave, and wild currant that grow closer to the ground.

One of the most abundant and well-suited trees for agroforestry in Arizona is the Mesquite. Mesquite trees have a long history of use by Native people of the Southwest for food, medicine, beverages, glue, hair dye, firewood, construction material, and furniture making. The Mesquite tree played a critical role in the ecologies and human populations of the arid and semi-arid regions of Mexico and the US.

Mesquite is an extremely resilient and adaptable tree and is a valuable multipurpose tree. Mesquite timber can be used as quality hardwoods for furniture and instruments and for smoking meats and other foods. The tree has many uses as a major, nutritious staple food crop. Mesquite has a low glycemic index and is high in fiber, protein, calcium, and potassium. The pods of the tree can be ground into a flour and also boiled to make beverages, syrups, and anti-diabetic medicinals. Other mesquite products include honey, mead, propolis, and livestock feed.

Mesquite can support climate change mitigation efforts by serving as a good candidate for carbon sequestration in agroforestry settings; the tree is long-lived and can grow quickly to a considerable size. Mesquite can also be pruned and thinned to enhance wildlife habitat and livestock pasture.

Arizona Farmers and Businesses Supporting Agroforestry

Some farms and businesses in Arizona are working to incorporate – or sustain – agroforestry in their farming operations and highlight the many nutritious and delicious uses of mesquite and other edible native tree ingredients.

Oatman Farms’ Organic Wild Mesquite Flour pancakes and waffle mix is made with heritage White Sonora wheat, organic honey, and mesquite flour. Their mesquite flour is made from the pods of the mesquite trees grown on their farm. It has a mild, sweet flavor with hints of molasses, caramel, and chocolate.

San Xavier Cooperative Farm employs tribal members to wild-harvest mesquite pods, sun dry them whole, and then mill them into a flour on their stone mill. They sell them in their store, online, and to local businesses.

Mission Garden is a living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit trees, traditional heirloom crops, and edible native plants. Their onsite garden store sells many products such as mesquite flour, jellies, and honey.

AZ Baking Company creates tasty treats from the Sonoran Desert. They source mesquite flour from Oatman Farms and incorporate it into premium mesquite chocolate chip cookie mixes for anybody who wants a deliciously different, easy-to-finish baking mix.

Monsoon Chocolate showcases the nutty and caramel-like flavor of toasted mesquite pods in their non-traditional Mesquite White Chocolate Bar.

Desert Harvesters has educated people for over twenty years on the nutritious food items provided by the Sonoran Desert and bean trees, such as Mesquite. Their “Eat Mesquite” cookbook highlights the many uses of mesquite.