Agroforestry Can Enhance Food Security While Meeting Other Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

To achieve global food security, we need to approximately double food production over the coming decades. Conventional agriculture is the mainstream approach to achieving this target but has also caused extensive environmental and social harms. The consensus is that we now need an agriculture that can ''multi-functionally'' increase food production while simultaneously enhancing social and environmental goals, as committed to in the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Farming also needs to become more resilient to multiple insecurities including climate change, soil degradation, and market unpredictability, all of which reduce sustainability and are likely to exacerbate hunger. Here, we illustrate how agroforestry systems can increase yield while also advancing multiple SDGs, especially for the small developing-world agriculturalists central to the SDG framework. Agroforestry also increases resilience of crops and farm livelihoods, especially among the most vulnerable food producers. However, conventional yield-enhancement strategies have naturally dominated the debate on food production, hindering implementation of more multifunctional alternatives. Governments and institutions now have the opportunity to rebalance agricultural policy and investment toward such multigoal approaches. In doing so, they could achieve important improvements on multiple international commitments around the interlinked themes of food security, climate change, biodiversity conservation, and social well-being.

The impacts of agroforestry on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well‐being in low‐and middle‐income countries: An evidence and gap map

“…3.4 | Why it is important to do the review As described above, agroforestry systems and practices are widespread across L&MICs and have increasingly been seen as a solution for boosting food security, addressing environmental degradation, and contributing to a range of other development policy objectives (Garrity et al, 2010;Waldron et al, 2017). Nevertheless, financing and effective promotion of agroforestry and other nonmainstream agricultural approaches remains limited in many contexts (DeLonge, Miles, & Carlisle, 2016;Horlings & Marsden, 2011;IPES-Food 2016).…”

“…This kind of synthetic work is also needed to help address what seems to be a persistent dichotomy in agroforestry research between studies in ecology and agronomy, which tend to focus on the agricultural productivity and environmental outcomes of agroforestry practices, and studies in international development that emphasize human well-being outcomes of agroforestry interventions.7 | DISCUSSION7.1 | Summary of main resultsAgroforestry has been widely practiced, promoted, and studied across the L&MICs of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Given its prevalence and promise, agroforestry is promoted for its potential to provide a vital contribution to advancing several of the 2030 UN SDGs(Van Noordwijk et al, 2018;Waldron et al, 2017). Indeed, high-level policy documents in many L&MICs now explicitly call for the integration of trees into farming systems (FAO 2013) and international donors have invested billions of dollars in agroforestry interventions around the world (AidData 2017; Tierney et al, 2011).…”

Who Adopts Agroforestry in a Subsistence Economy?

“…Nonetheless, there has been a wealth of research works on agroforestry adoption [20]. Most of the existing literature is focused on the socio-economic, and environmental contributions of an agroforestry system (21)(22)(23).…”

Commercial Agriculture in Tropical Environments

“…(4) Sustainable tropical agriculture means linking smallholders, the vast bulk of farmers, with commercial agriculture, the vast bulk of agribusiness. Endres and Endres (2017) and Waldron et al (2017) direct us to think about the many smallholders populating the agricultural production units in the tropics, especially Africa. Endres and Endres (2017) discuss the prospects for European buyers to explicitly source from small holders, while Waldron et al (2017) proposes multifunctional crops like agroforestry models that can support livelihoods and supply environmental services.…”

“…Endres and Endres (2017) and Waldron et al (2017) direct us to think about the many smallholders populating the agricultural production units in the tropics, especially Africa. Endres and Endres (2017) discuss the prospects for European buyers to explicitly source from small holders, while Waldron et al (2017) proposes multifunctional crops like agroforestry models that can support livelihoods and supply environmental services. Goldsmith (2017), meanwhile, draws on comparative evidence from Brazil and Ghana to show that engaging smallholders in commercial agriculture can be both the best hope and the worst threat for smallholders.…”