Silvopastoral Systems (SPS) in the tropics and subtropics

Abstract

Silvopasture is a broad term encompassing different forms of integrating trees, forage, and domesticated animals on the same unit of land. The practice ranges from the traditional, extensive animal grazing under woodlots and forests to modernized intensive forms of tree-animal integration. These can broadly be grouped under two categories: grazing system where cattle graze on pasture under scattered or systematically planted stands of trees; and the browsing (tree-fodder) systems, in which the animals are usually stall-fed with fodder from trees or shrubs grown on farms and farm boundaries. Most silvopasture systems (SPS) in Africa, South Asia, and other developing regions of the world involve extensive open grazing by free-roaming animals under natural stands of trees and shrubs. Major examples are found in the so-called Parklands of sub-Saharan Africa, the Brazilian Cerrado (wet savanna) and Caatinga (dry savanna) biomes, and the arid and semiarid lands of the Indian subcontinent. The browsing systems of small-scale dairy farming involving cut-and-carry fodder from fodder banks and boundary plantings are a popular and traditional means of livelihood strategy and income generation in rural households. The integrated crop-livestock-forestry system is a relatively new form of silvopastoral activity organized on a commercial scale in Brazil and some other parts of Latin America. Research on SPS in the tropics and subtropics has so far been more exploratory than experimental, with emphasis on understanding and documenting the existing situation. Thus, the literature on tropical SPS is dominated by conventional system descriptions, reports on species inventory and evaluations, nutritive values of indigenous tree fodder, and sociocultural narratives of the people and their traditions.