Tiêu đề Introduction to Agroforestry pdf.pdf ✅

Introduction to Agroforestry: Perspectives and Priorities The significant foundational work of agroforestry was carried out by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada in July 1975 under the leadership of Dr John Bene. The IRDC came out with some major recommendations to improve the productivity of agricultural lands and one of them was to focus on a combined production system that includes forestry, crops and animal husbandry. This paved way for the establishment of agroforestry as science. After the establishment of the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF, legal name), also known as World Agroforestry Centre (WAC); its works on agroforestry showcased the role of trees in farmland (Nair, 1993). Today, agroforestry research has entered the fifth phase focusing more on dynamics and socio-ecological systems at the landscape, livelihoods’ level and policy level. Yet, there are misconceptions on the definitions of agroforestry among different stakeholders (Somarriba, 1992; Raj and Lal, 2013; Atangana, et al., 2014; Dagar and Tewari, 2017). The recent publication from the World Agroforestry Centre (WAC) titled “Sustainable development through trees on farms: agroforestry in its fifth decade” systematically brings in analogy to elucidate the development of agroforestry and enlighten the readers on the definition of agroforestry (van Noordwijk, 2019). It is stated that the initial years of agroforestry research was mainly devoted to proving the existence of agroforestry as such. Historically, farmers have incorporated and incorporating trees in farms lands globally and the recent study at global scale also prove that more than 40% of agricultural land has 10% of tree cover. Therefore, the scientific works on agroforestry have always attempted to provide a framework for the existing practice in the farmer’s field. And the definition for agroforestry in the 1970s was “Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos etc.) are deliberately used on the same land management unit as crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence. In agroforestry systems, there are both ecological and economic interactions between the different components”. Subsequently, the definition of agroforestry was simplified and modified to highlights its contribution to the environment and natural resource management. “Agroforestry is a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in agricultural landscapes, diversifies and
sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels”. “Agroforestry, a combination of agriculture and forestry, is a land use that combines aspects of both, including the agricultural use of trees”(van Noordwijk, 2019). However, fundamentally, the difference was the usage of the word “trees” instead of “wood perennials”. This subsequently led to contextualizing agroforestry as a forestry-centric subject but on the contrary, it is more multidisciplinary. Given that there was focused limelight in forestry trees or timber yielding trees, there was wide spectra opinion of neglecting horticultural crops. This has exactly been reflected in the usage of terms like agri- horticultural systems, horti-silvipastoral systems, agri-silvi-horticultural system, etc. in the scientific literature for the past 20 years. Overall, it indicated that our assumption on agroforestry has to change and agroforestry is not an intervention, nor a system but a land- use practice where perennials are intentionally cultivated in agricultural land. This may lead to a fundamental question demanding an explanation on the need for the specified/focused research on agroforestry. The land preparation practice for cereals, vegetables and plantation crops like tea differs from each other despite the uniformity in fundamental approach. However, in the case of agroforestry, the land preparation practice differs completely depending on the nature of perennials plants. For instance, the land preparation practice for the bamboo-based agroforestry systems is different from Khejri (Prosopis cineraria) based agroforestry. It can be attributed to the edpaho-climatic condition of the species as well as the autecology of the species i.e. silviculture of the species. The difference in management not only happens in land preparation, but it also happens in all cropping phases. Therefore, our need should be not only developing tree or horticulture-based agroforestry models but to develop a package of practices. Developing a package of practices will provide an understanding that farmers require on incorporating a particular perennial in their land and the flexibility to manage and maintain it. 1. Agroforestry as land use Land as such is a scarce and invaluable resource that provides a broad spectrum of provisioning and ecosystem services. Definition of land as per FAO is “Land is a delineable area of the earth’s terrestrial surface, encompassing all attributes of the Biosphere
immediately above or below this surface, including near-surface climate, the soil and terrain forms, the surface hydrology (including shallow lakes, rivers, marshes and swamps), the near- surface sedimentary layer and associated groundwater reserve, the plant and animal populations, the human settlement pattern and physical results of past and present human activity (terracing, water storage or drainage structures, roads, buildings, etc.) (FAO, 2011). The extent of land available for the cultivation of crops and other human utilities is limited. Data reveals that about 149 million km2 of the earth surface island and out of 104 million km2 of habitable land, about 51 million km2 is under agriculture and 39 million km2 is under forests (https://ourworldindata.org/). However, our intensive and industrialist approach to food production has contributed to land degradation. This is reflected in the 5% decline in the global net primary productivity. Moreover, the issue of land availability is also a major concern in highly populated countries like India where the per capita agricultural land availability is 0.12 ha compared to 0.29 ha at the global level (Pental, 2021). Given the constraints in land availability, there is a need to introspect the reason for promoting agroforestry in the country. First, despite the land availability constraints, our country is a surplus in food grain production i.e. food security is addressed. The green revolution has fed our country and prevented catastrophes. However, it has met only our calorie requirement, not our nutritional requirement. About 196 million people in India are undernourished including 26 million children (Pental, 2021). Incorporating fruit and nut- bearing trees in farmlands have proven to increase the income as well as nutritional needs of the farmers. Second, some of the existing cultivable lands are degrading and some of the degraded lands are reclaimed for cultivation and other land-use practice. The role of trees in reclaiming degraded lands cannot be undermined. Thus, agroforestry can help in the reclamation of degraded lands and bring in land degradation neutrality (Vieira et al., 2009; Paul et al., 2015). Third, as state earlier there is a need to increase the forest and tree cover to 33%. As per India State of Forest Report 2019 report, the forest and tree cover of India is 24.56% and trees outside forests like agroforestry is one of the most viable option to increase. Finally, agroforestry has been to proven to meet Food, Fibre, Fuel, Fodder and Fertilizer demand (F5) and generate income to farmers in rural tropical and sub-tropical regions (Hoch et al., 2009). Agroforestry is recognized as a form for sustainable intensification of agriculture and to avoid monoculture plantations (Isbell et al., 2017; Santos,Crouzeilles and Sansevero,
2019). Globally agroforestry is not only recognized as nature-based solution for climate change but also as part of landscape restoration programme under the Bonn challenge (Stanturf et al., 2019; Dave et al., 2019). It’s a proven fact that agroforestry is profitable and sustainable land-use. And the current estimate of area under agroforestry as per ICAR-Central Agroforestry Research Institute is 23.365 million hectares which ~8% of the total geographical area of the country (Rizvi et al., 2019). One of the main reasons for increased adoption of agroforestry in India as well as in other parts of the world is the uniqueness of the agroforestry as a sustainable farming approach. As per ICAR-CAFRI estimates in 2019 the area under agroforestry in the country is 23.37 million ha which is 8.73% of the total geographical area of the country. The area under agroforestry according to agro-climatic zones is listed in Table 1 (Rizvi et al., 2019). Table 1. Area under agroforestry (Agro-climatic zone wise) ACZ No. Agro-climatic Zones Agroforestry Area (M ha) Agroforestry Area (%) 3 Lower Gangetic Plains Region 0.80 11.91 4 Middle Gangetic Plains Region 1.30 7.87 5 Upper Gangetic Plains Region 2.23 15.47 6 Trans Gangetic Plains Region 1.14 9.85 7 Eastern Plateau & Hill Region 4.29 10.84 8 Central Plateau & Hill Region 1.93 5.09 9 Western Plateau & Hill Region 1.56 4.75 10 Southern Plateau & Hill Region 2.98 7.55 11 East Coast Plains & Hill Region 2.36 11.68 12 West Coast Plains & Hill Region 1.66 14.18 13 Gujarat Plains & Hill Region 2.57 13.56 14 Western Dry Region 0.43 2.41 Total 23.37 8.73 2. Relevance agroforestry for the Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDG) The central focal point of all SDG goals is the “land-use” (van Noordwijk et al., 2018). Agroforestry as a land-use can be proven to follow all the principles of the sustainable land management. As per the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT), the key principles are buildup of soil organic matter and related biological activity, integrated plant nutrition management, better crop management, better rainwater management, improvement of soil rooting depth and permeability and reclamation of the