The many benefits of agroforestry and how India can capitalize on these through its National Agroforestry Policy is the subject of an article in The Hindu by Rita Sharma, Board Trustee of the World Agroforestry Centre.
She outlines how growing trees on farms provides a triple-win: increasing food production, mitigating greenhouse gases and helping adapt to climate change.
“Agroforestry promotes productive cropping environments, prevents deforestation, protects watersheds and enables agricultural land to withstand extreme weather events,” says Sharma.
Trees provide products such as fruit, fodder, fuel, fiber, fertilizer and timber which add to food and nutritional security, income generation and insurance against crop failure and services. They also provide services such as soil and water conservation, nutrient recycling, carbon storage and biodiversity preservation. Agroforestry can provide energy through biomass, biodiesel, biochar and biogas production.
While for centuries farmers have cultivated trees on farmland together with crops and animal husbandry, it is only more recently that the science and technology of agroforestry and its policies and institutions have been characterized as uniquely their own. Agroforestry has suffered from falling between the cracks of agriculture and forestry.
In India, the launch of the National Agroforestry Policy opens the way for innovation in tree-based farming systems among various stakeholders by:
- Removing unfavorable legislation and simplifying regulations
- Ensuring agroforestry is incorporated into all policies relating to land use and natural resource management
- Encouraging investment in agroforestry-related infrastructure, research and education, and in the establishment of sustainable enterprises
- Ensuring coordination between various elements of agroforestry scattered in existing missions and programs
- Generating improved agroforestry science and technology, extension systems, loans and insurance schemes
- Increasing the capacity of farmers and helping to link producers with markets
- Leading to private sector investment in agroforestry.
The challenge, says Sharma “lies in the detail of crafting a road map for the implementation of the National Agroforestry Policy by the new government.”
Read the full story: For a tree on every field boundary
See also: India’s bold plan to achieve 33% tree cover through agroforestry
