Diversifying and adding trees to farming systems may help mitigate the impact of climate change and improve food production.

In an article on EurActiv, Patrick Worms, Policy Adviser to the World Agroforestry Centre, responds to the recently released report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by outlining the potential for agroforestry in building resilience.

In its report, the IPCC says climate change has “already affected agriculture, human health, ecosystems on land and in the oceans, water supplies, and some people’s livelihoods”. It warns of falling yields and rising prizes, especially for staples such as maize.

Building resilience to climate change may involve introducing more complexity into agricultural systems, says Worms.

Climate-smart agriculture involves a range of practices that increase sustainable productivity, strengthen farmers’ resilience, reduce agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration. Agroforestry offers a “promising suite of climate smart techniques” and can diversify farmers’ production.

For example, planting maize with shade trees protects it from extreme temperatures and increases yields. The use of fertilizer trees can boost yields further and reduce input costs. In Sumatra, Indonesia, rubber agroforestry can generate up to 3 times the income of rubber plantations, partly due to the reduced need for costly pesticides.

Trees can lessen the impact of drought, improve soil fertility and trees capture carbon dioxide, helping to mitigate climate change.

“Adding the right trees makes the fields where they are grown more resilient to extreme weather, and their farmers less dependent on a single crop,” says Worms.

He acknowledges that agroforestry is a more complex form of agriculture and for this reason it is still only used by a minority of farmers. It requires long-term planning, special skills and a different approach to managing land. “But that complexity should not scare us. In science, the twenty-first century is the century of complexity.”

Read the full story: Agroforestry is crucial to the food production challenge