Historical developments: The coming of age of agroforestry

Abstract

This introductory chapter traces the historical evolution and development of agriculture and forestry as separate disciplines and chronicles how the demands and challenges of the post-World War II era led to the emergence of agroforestry as an interface between the two. The Green Revolution technologies of the late 1900s paved the way for increasing food crop production substantially in developing countries. On the forestry front, significant gains were attained in enhancing commercial timber production through the establishment of tree plantations. However, these successes were beyond the reach of vast numbers of resource-poor farmers, and the traditional, combined production systems of trees and crops that those farmers have been practicing over generations in many parts of the world were ignored or bypassed. At the same time, tropical deforestation and its disastrous consequences continued unabated. To address these issues, agroforestry was conceived as an integrated approach to combined production systems involving trees and crops on the same unit of land. Parallel to these developments in the tropics, the importance of such combined production systems was recognized in the temperate regions as well following the ecological drawbacks and failures of high-intensity farming and forestry operations. The demand for environmental accountability and application of ecologically compatible land-management practices increased when it became clear that the land-use and land-cover changes associated with the removal and fragmentation of natural vegetation for the establishment of agricultural and forestry enterprises led to adverse ecological consequences. Over the past more than four decades, agroforestry has evolved gradually from modest early beginnings to an integrated approach to land management drawing upon the science-based advances in related fields.