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How agroforestry schemes can improve food security in developing countries
Agroforestry – the integration of trees and shrubs with crops and livestock systems – has strong potential in addressing problems of food insecurity in developing countries. Done well, it allows producers to make the best use of their land, can boost field crop yields, diversify income, and increase resilience to climate change.Click here to read more. Continue Reading
Agroforestry: A unique pathway to securing a more sustainable future
The term 'agroforestry' is one of the newest buzzwords circulating in the organic sector at the moment. It is an integrated land use system that combines elements of agriculture and forestry in a sustainable production system. It could be said that Irish farms already incorporate a certain amount of agroforestry, with plenty of hedgerows that have a practical function as field and farm boundaries. Continue Reading
Evergreen Agriculture and Re-greening of Africa with ACIAR’s Tony Bartlett
Can the practice known as evergreen agriculture deliver both increased food and nutritional security to millions across Africa, and also have the potential to re-green the continent? Tony Barlett, the Forestry Research Program Manager with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, thinks so.Click here to read more. Continue Reading
Tree intercropping ‘could save Africa’s soils’
Scientists have reported in Nature that the agroforestry approach of planting nutrient-fixing trees with food crops could help replenish Africa's poor quality soils, tackling one of the biggest threats to food security on the continent. Planting certain perennial trees together with food crops can more than double yields for maize and millet, which are among Sub-Saharan Africa's staple foods, scientists say. Continue Reading
KENYA: Experts rally for agroforestry, commercial tree farming
In 2010 and 2009, Kenya lost a whopping 5.8 billion Kenya shillings (US$68 million) and 6.6 billion shillings ($77 million), respectively, to deforestation, a new report released by the government and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reveals.This is despite the fact that forestry-related commercial activities brought just 1.3 billion shillings into the national economy in the same period.Click here to read more. Continue Reading
Time to embrace evergreen agriculture?
Has the time come for abandoning the green revolution and embracing the idea of ‘evergreen agriculture’? Hans R. Herren, President of the Millennium Institute in Washington and President of the Biovision Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, thinks so. Continue Reading