North American Agroforestry

The United States is a modern, industrialized nation with an increasingly large educated, urban population. Therefore, agroforestry practices are being developed to simultaneously address the market opportunities in urban areas while also meeting specific interests, needs, and problems of rural landowners. Currently, obstacles to agroforestry adoption exist but are in the process of being overcome (de Jalon et al., 2018; Wilson & Lovell, 2016). Barriers include the expense of establishment, landowners’ lack of experience with trees (Faulkner et al., 2014), the time and knowledge required for management and marketing (Valdivia, Barbieri, & Gold, 2012), and a lack of understanding by extension and state and federal agency professionals.

Agroforestry practices also have to compete with commodity crops, which have well‐developed government support systems providing insurance and price guarantees that significantly reduce landowner risk. Agroforestry practices do not, at present, have the same level of support, requiring that the landowner take on significant risk in adopting agroforestry practices. That said, the support structure and knowledge network for agroforestry is growing rapidly, addressing many of the issues constraining agroforestry adoption (Schoeneberger et al., 2017).

The depth and breadth of the agroforestry research–education–application infrastructure has come a long way in the past 40 yr, developing most rapidly in the past decade. Coupled with an acceleration of biophysical and socioeconomic research, there are now positive changes in federal policy and positive market trends. The USDA–NRCS formally recognized temperate agroforestry practices in their cost‐share Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), helping promote agroforestry through national policy. Further support for growth of the agroforestry sector comes from positive consumer and market trends: increased demand for and promoting of “buy local”; growth of direct‐to‐consumer farmers markets; continued growth in the organic sector; and strong interest in pasture‐based livestock production.

Formally accredited online graduate certificate and master’s degree programs have been established; numerous extended‐duration training programs have been created and designed to train educators and landowners; NGOs (e.g., the Savanna Institute) and private sector (e.g., Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, PBC Farms Beef) engage with landowners in agroforestry; multiple specialty crop and livestock cooperatives (e.g., elderberry, chestnut, hazelnut [ Corylus spp.], aronia) have been formed; and robust financial decision support tools have been developed.

As it matures, this infrastructure must provide an interconnected feedback–feedforward knowledge system of researchers, teachers, extension personnel, and field practitioners to promote and support the development, refinement, and implementation of new ideas and practices (Gold, 2007).

The ongoing challenge is the continued development of domestic agroforestry practices along with the development of more discipline‐based land use strategies of sustainable agriculture and forestry. Almost 30 yr ago, Lassoie and Buck (1991) called for a major national commitment similar to the one mounted near the turn of the 20th century for agricultural production and forest conservation. As we begin 2021, large‐scale refocusing of the nation’s resources and professional energies has yet to fully materialize owing to the strength and ingrained structure of our current institutions and steady stream of state budget tightening. Nonetheless, concerns about the environmental impacts of current land use practices and the deterioration of the land base and water are increasingly being recognized as important problems to address (e.g., hypoxia, soil health). In spite of institutional and fiscal limitations, steady development efforts are underway to move domestic agroforestry from concepts to practices. During the past decade, steady progress has been underway at many different levels toward building a research–education–practice infrastructure involving a unique partnership including academia, state and federal governments, NGOs, the private sector, and agroforestry practitioners.

Since the second North American Agroforestry Conference (NAAC) (Garrett, 1991), there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of biophysical and socioeconomic agroforestry research in the United States and Canada. This is directly reflected in the chapters within this third edition of North American Agroforestry along with other recently published works and edited volumes (Gordon et al., 2018; Mosquera‐Losada & Prabhu, 2019; Schoeneberger et al., 2017). The 16th NAAC was held in 2019 and showcased a substantial amount of interdisciplinary research focused on specific opportunities where agroforestry practices can be applied. Temperate agroforestry research is regularly being reported at workshops and special sessions sponsored by professional societies, e.g., see recent abstracts of sessions at the American Society of Agronomy, Ecological Society of America, Society of American Foresters, and government agencies (e.g., USDA, 2019), along with active international conferences and symposia in Europe and elsewhere (Dupraz, Gosme, & Lawson, 2019). More scientific publications are appearing in a wider variety of scientific journals in addition to Agroforestry Systems (e.g., Forest Ecology and Management ; Society and Natural Resources ; Agronomy Journal ; Plant and Soil ; Sustainability ; Agriculture , Ecosystems , and Environment ; and the Journal of Environmental Quality ).

Previously considered to be a new, interdisciplinary, applied science, agroforestry used to be equated with being professionally “vague” and “non‐rigorous” by many working in more narrow scientific disciplines. However, the biennial NAAC, European Agroforestry conferences (EURAF), and the breadth and depth of the scientific literature are helping to change this situation by raising the professional recognition of those working in domestic agroforestry.

The volume of quality agroforestry research has increased dramatically in the past four decades, helping to support the application of agroforestry domestically. While the science of agroforestry lacks the full spectrum of understanding necessary to assure the successful widespread implementation of most agroforestry practices (e.g., information about specific species’ responses to site characteristics, economics of production through time), a substantial body of research information has been developed and is increasing annually. Advances in both the biophysical and socioeconomic understanding of agroforestry practices is helping to reduce both biological and financial risks for producers.

Agroforestry scientists have found grant support through the many programs within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), the nation’s leading competitive grants program for the agricultural sciences. The NIFA awards AFRI research, education, and extension grants to improve rural economies, increase food production, stimulate the bioeconomy, mitigate the impacts of climate variability, address water availability issues, ensure food safety and security, enhance human nutrition, and train the next generation of the agricultural workforce. Multiple federal agencies and programs including NIFA, the USDA–AMS, USDA–ARS, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Forest Service, NRCS, SARE, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health all support facets of the science and application of agroforestry.