Agroforestry Standards for Regenerative Agriculture

Abstract

Agroforestry is increasingly being recognized as a holistic food production system that can have numerous significant environmental, economic, and social benefits. This growing recognition is paralleled in the U.S. by the budding interest in regenerative agriculture and motivation to certify regenerative practices. Current efforts to develop a regenerative agriculture certification offer an opportunity to consider agroforestry’s role in furthering regenerative goals. To understand this opportunity, we first examine how agroforestry practices can advance regenerative agriculture’s five core environmental concerns: soil fertility and health, water quality, biodiversity, ecosystem health, and carbon sequestration. Next, we review a subset of certification programs, standards, guidelines, and associated scientific literature to understand existing efforts to standardize agroforestry. We determine that development of an agroforestry standard alongside current efforts to certify regenerative agriculture offers an opportunity to leverage common goals and strengths of each. Additionally, we determine that there is a lack of standards with measurable criteria available for agroforestry, particularly in temperate locations. Lastly, we propose a framework and general, measurable criteria for an agroforestry standard that could potentially be implemented as a standalone standard or built into existing agriculture, forestry, or resource conservation certification programs.

Exotic urban trees conserve similar natural enemy communities to native congeners but have fewer pests

“…All these issues converge when managing urban trees to conserve arthropods and minimize pests. Urban forest design and planting recommendations generally include increasing tree diversity at multiple taxonomic levels using a mixture of native and non-native species (Raupp, Cumming & Raupp, 2006; Elevitch & Wilkinson, 2001). The primary goal of increasing urban tree diversity has been to reduce catastrophic damage caused by exotic pests such as emerald ash borer and Dutch elm disease.…”

Improvement of the economic efficiency of protective forest plantations in the agricultural sector of the Russian Federation

“…Protective forest plantations are man-made forest belts. Their goal is to protect various objects from adverse natural and anthropogenic factors [11]. In the case of farmland, forest belts help to combat drought, soil erosion from water and wind.…”

Development of a Breadfruit Flour Pasta Product

“…The breadfruit cultivar, ‘Ma’afala’—see [33,34] for fruit attributes—was utilized for the development of the breadfruit pasta. Mature fruit was harvested by hand from trees in McBryde Garden in the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Kalaheo, Kauai, Hawaii.…”