for many years.
The past 40 yr have witnessed a growing understanding of the potential usefulness of agroforestry practices in addressing today’s concerns over the economic and environmental sustainability of forest and farm lands. Gold and Hanover (1987) discussed two such practices: managing conifer sawlog with cattle grazing practices (silvopasture) and multi‐cropping valuable hardwoods with agricultural crops (alley cropping). There are five widely recognized agroforestry practices in the United States today: (a) alley cropping, (b) riparian and upland buffers, (c) windbreaks, (d) silvopasture, and (e) forest farming. In addition to the five recognized practices, there is an emerging agroforestry practice called urban food forests that has gained considerable attention in the past decade (Bukowski & Munsell, 2018). The specifics concerning these six practices are examined later in this volume. In addition, with the growing interest in terrestrial carbon sequestration and alternative fuels provided by woody and herbaceous growth, there has been increasing interest in the role of agroforestry practices to sequester and store carbon as well as systems that produce biofuels. The National Agroforestry Center has continued to add support to those practices, providing publications and guidance to landowners and practitioners (Schoeneberger, 2005; USDA, 2015, 2019). Much progress has been attained toward the building of research, education, and application for domestic agroforestry that will foster the development of these practices (Gold, 2007; Gold, Hemmelgarn, & Mendelson, 2019; Gold & Jose, 2012). However, before discussing these concepts relative to the challenges still facing the development of agroforestry in the United States, we must first provide an appropriate context by considering opportunities for its development.
Opportunities for Agroforestry
There is a range of opportunities for the development of agroforestry in the United States, a topic first addressed relative to nut‐tree crops in 1989 (Lassoie et al., 1991) and then more comprehensively by Lassoie and Buck (1991) and more recently by Jose et al. (2018). What follows is a consideration of the importance of agroforestry to the development of newly emerging (a) land use systems, (b) institutional arrangements, (c) scientific opportunities, and (d) knowledge systems. It is important to note that many of the following statements are in the process of ongoing validation and are areas under active evaluation by agroforestry professionals.
Opportunities for Practical Application
The possibilities for developing agroforestry for use in rural and urban areas of the United States is encouraging. It did function extensively at one time throughout North America (Carroll, 1973; Cronon, 1983; Russell, 1982), and refugia of such practices still exist today (e.g., see Campbell et al., 1991; Gold & Hanover, 1987; Schultz et al., 1995). Agroforestry is currently working effectively in many other developed (Burgess & Rosati, 2018; Gordon, Newman, & Coleman, 2018; Mead, 1995; Von Maydell, 1995) as well as developing (Hillbrand, Borelli, Conigliaro, & Olivier, 2017; Nair, 1989, 1993) countries. The political and social climate in the United States is rapidly changing, which is likely to allow the development of the new land use strategies that include agroforestry (Jose et al., 2018; Lovell et al., 2018; National Research Council, 1996; USDA, 2019). Opportunities for the development and application of domestic agroforestry practices can be separated into ecological, economic, and social components for discussion purposes; however, one needs to keep in mind that these components are interrelated, interlinked, and interactive.
Ecological
One of the primary advantages of agroforestry in the United States probably rests in its ecological benefits and resultant environmental protection characteristics (Garrett et al., 1994; Jose, 2009; Jose & Gordon, 2008; Jose, Walter, & Kumar, 2019; Kremen & Merenlender, 2018; Udawatta & Jose, 2012). As an ecologically based land management strategy, agroforestry practices help maintain ecosystem diversity and processes that are important to the long‐term sustainability of any extractive land use practice such as agriculture and forestry. This approach offers the opportunity to maintain and possibly improve the quality of the soil resource by reducing erosion, enhancing nutrient capital, and improving water infiltration and retention rates (Dollinger & Jose, 2018; Udawatta, Gantzer, & Jose, 2017). Trees also moderate microclimatic extremes, assuring cooler summers and warmer winters. Such conditions are beneficial to the production of certain food crops and livestock under severe environmental conditions as well as to human comfort. Agroforestry practices can also result in decreases in chemical (e.g., fertilizers and pesticides) and energy inputs of farming systems, all important to an environmentally sensitive society (Jose, 2019; Lerch, Lin, Goyne, Kremer, & Anderson, 2017). There is a growing movement to value some of the environmental services provided by agroforestry practices, allowing their benefits to be translated into economic incentives for landowners.
Economic
Agroforestry offers financial opportunities associated with enhancing the profitability of traditional farming systems (Alavalapati & Mercer, 2004; Campbell et al., 1991; Nair, 1993; Van Vooren et al., 2016). One option is to reduce production costs by decreasing the need for external chemical, water, energy, and/or labor inputs. Another is that agroforestry might increase the net value of production from the nation’s farmlands through optimizing mixtures of primary (e.g., corn, sawlogs, nuts, cattle, etc.) and secondary crops (e.g., mushrooms, Christmas trees, silvopasture‐raised chickens, etc.) as well as ecological services (e.g., carbon sequestration and water quality credits) for which specialty markets have been or are being developed (Van Vooren et al., 2016; de Jalon et al., 2018). Total production might also be enhanced by increasing production from highly erodible or frequently flooded fragile lands without causing severe environmental degradation, for example through the use of tree crops as suggested by Smith (1950).
Social
The development of agroforestry in the United States has social ramifications that will be realized at the individual, community, and national levels. As a sustainable land use strategy, agroforestry practices can further the land stewardship concept (Jordan, 1994; Montambault & Alavalapati, 2005; Roesch‐McNally, Arbuckle, & Tyndall, 2017; Udawatta et al., 2017; Weber, 1991) by providing assurance to landowners that they are meeting their ownership responsibilities to provide healthy ecosystems for future generations. If agroforestry proves to enhance the production capabilities of rural lands, such practices will help revitalize rural communities, which have become socially depressed because of recent economic problems (Jose et al., 2018). Farmers with limited land and immigrant populations interested in farming provide an important audience as well as a population that may be more interested in the more labor‐intensive practices common to agroforestry (Faulkner, Owooh, & Idassi, 2014). Understanding the role that agroforestry might play in modern land use systems will also help individuals appreciate that people from developing countries have experiences, insights, and knowledge potentially helpful for solving many problems currently plaguing modern societies (Coulibaly, Chiputwa, Nakelse, & Kundhlande, 2016; Jose & Dollinger, 2019). Such an appreciation for the value of human capital and indigenous (i.e., local) knowledge (Rossier & Lake, 2014) will help reduce ethnocentric and educational biases that form barriers between individuals who must work together to successfully address today’s environmental crises. Also important is the impression that the United States must make on the rest of the world with respect to its concern about the management of its own natural resources. Developing agroforestry practices and integrated agricultural and forestry land use systems will set international standards for ecologically sound management by example. Our concern about deforestation, desertification, and soil erosion in developing countries will gain more credibility once our own “ecological house” is in order.
Opportunities for Institutional Development
The continued development of a domestic focus on agroforestry offers
