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Agroforestry Adoption By Smallholders

Informally Refereed

Abstract

Agroforestry is a joint forest production system whereby land, labor, and capital inputs are combined to produce trees and agricultural crops (and/or livestock) on the same unit of land. Although existing for centuries (maybe millennia) as an array of traditional land use practices in the tropics, agroforestry emerged in the late 1970s as a modern, improved tropical land use system suitable for scientific study, replete with its own international research center, the International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) and journal, Agroforestry Systems. During the 199Os, interest in agroforestry in temperate regions increased rapidly when the scientific community discovered the complex land management systems developed by rural landowners in North America and Europe, including forest farming, alley cropping, shelterbelts, riparian buffers, and silvopastural systems (Lassoie and Buck 1999).

Citation

Mercer, D. Evan; Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. 2003. Agroforestry Adoption By Smallholders. In: Sills, Erin O.; Abt, Karen Lee, eds. Forests in a market economy. 2003. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. p. 283-299.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/6370