The separation of farms and forests in policy is proving detrimental to biodiversity, food security and the ability of landscapes to provide ecosystem services.

An article on the Forests News blog of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) summarizes discussions during an event at the recent Forests Asia Summit which looked at successes and failures in policy integration across Asia.

One of the successes comes from work in China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forest Program which is subsidizing 32 million rural households to plant trees in place of cropland. In the course of the program, there has been a significant change from forbidding to encouraging intercropping. This has had an impact on food security; increasing the production of many forest foods, including fruits, edible oils and medicinal plants.

In the Mekong Basin, prior to the 1950s and 60s, most of the land use was shifting cultivation which can provide both “high levels of biodiversity and food security,” says Dietrich Schmidt-Vogt, senior scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre. Land use changes over the years have affected both food security and biodiversity, such as in China where policies promoting tree planting have replaced shifting cultivation. “Increased tree cover has come at the expense of natural forest,” says the article. Conversely, in Thailand field crops mixed with forests now dominate.

Panelists at the Forests Asia Summit event called for an integrated, landscape approach to agricultural and forest policy to account for the interconnectedness of both types of land use.

Read the full story: Examples in Asia lend weight to policy link for forests, farms