Agroforestry Projects Beyond the Field

Fields Without Fences, BIRD, Center Field mid Apri, 2024

When we began planting out our fields, we interplanted shrubs with trees and herbaceous plants; we thinned autumn olive and multiflora rose, and tucked woodland plants into the small slivers of shade adjacent to existing hedgerows; we tightly spaced baby trees in regrowth woodland plots. We also estimated yields, properly spaced headlands, and charted future coppice rotations. This practice of modeling ecosystems off of woodland dynamics while simultaneously yielding economies of agricultural output is called agroforestry. The techniques of implementation are a diverse set of practices recently recognized under the USDA, but also, an ancient way of relating and coexisting with the natural landscape of tree growing regions across the world.

This spring, as part of the agroecology consulting work we do beyond our fields, we were involved with several diverse projects engaging in site specific design and implementation of agroforestry systems. A client in northern New Jersey establishing a diverse and robust forest farm operation began clearing work on a transitional woodland thick with barberry and standing dead ash trees. The debris from the clearing was piled in berms laid in accordance with the contour of the landscape. Native savannah and pasture grasses will be planted for future ruminants to range under dappled tree cover. Silvopasture by removal. Working with our sister organization, Restoration Agriculture Development, we planted 85,000 native food and fodder trees on 8.8 miles of riparian buffer in central Ohio for a major automotive manufacturer.

Some of the individuals, farms, and organizations we work with are actively engaged with implementing agroforestry practices, others are just beginning to dream what their relationship with their landscape will look like. And further still, some are established farms inheriting a legacy of degradation, and looking to heal severed ties with their environment. An ecosystem at its most foundational level is a set of interactive relationships. Agroforestry, and agroecology in general, begins very basically with an acknowledgement that trees have an essential role to play in shaping our world, from preserving the integrity of our ecology, to providing food, fodder, and shelter for temperate climate dwelling people.

An astounding 40% of the land in the United States is currently designated farmland. In a heartening trend, more and more farms are integrating various permutations of treed ecosystems into agricultural lands - growing food, sequestering carbon, enhancing watersheds, and providing healthy ecosystems for livestock- shifting the tide of the future, by way of the past.

Johann & Restoration Agriculture Development tree Planting / ource: Image still from Honda promotional video