Agroforestry as a tool for world regeneration

Agroforestry represents the approach model to the agricultural world of the future. According to permaculture principles, and therefore to the cosmic law "work with Nature rather than against" [1], it is the global-scale way with which humankind can meet its needs of water, food, air and materials in general in a sustainable way, assuring its permanence in time to future generations of beings.

The aim is to create a productive ecosystem, a community of plants (and animals and microorganisms) mutually beneficial, consciously designed through imitation of natural ecological processes; they, thanks to the design of the agricultural practice, are speeded up to create the qualities of low fragility, high resilience, diversity and functional interconnection. [2] It is an agricultural system that is based on crop diversification in the same field (stratification in space e succession over time), benefiting from the ecological interactions between various plants and animals species.

Agroforestry systems actually tends to stability, resilience, self-maintenance, self-regulation and self-renewal. [3] Self-maintenance is understood as a progressive reduction of the instability of the agrosystem, and consequence of the energy input of agricultural practice to maintain it, through the internal production of most of the needs (fertility, reproduction, resistance to pathogens and erosion). It exists an amount of work, which will change over time, that represents services we have to consider for the development of the system to make it available for us.

The field we are caring of is permeated  by many aspects of the agroforestry approach, creating a diverse landscape in different parts of the land. Since the first time, exploring the property makes me wonder, appreciating the great design work that is behind all the specific plant placing and implementation.

There are different agroforestation techniques, which can be used singularly or mixed. A "Buffering Area" it's a forest belt made for water, biodiversity and erosion protection. "Windbreaks" are dense and layered hedges that protect the ground from the wind. "Alley Cropping" is a planting system of rows of trees and shrubs wide apart, creating inter-rows in which annual crops are grown (cereals, legumes, vegetables or fodder). "Silvopastural Systems" have the same structure with arboreal and shrub rows but the annual crops are replaced by pasture where animals are raised. "Forest Farming" is a low-input cultivation of a coming forest diversified and managed for wood production and other services. Lastly, and most romantic, "Forest Gardening" is the cultivation of an ecological garden in which plants are combined together (root plants, ground cover, annual and perennial herbaceous plants, climbing plants, shrubs and trees) in a complex pattern with no precise order. [4] The garden of Eden.. [5]

The practical applications vary from regeneration of degraded soils and farms to abandoned and confiscated land, extending virtually to every piece of land we can manage to care. So, imagine walk the Earth picking apples on the way to school, feeling the difference of the temperature passing through a grape pergola, breathing fresh air, hanging out with your friends playing under the shade of a massive oak, going shopping at the community food forest.. if we could transform the land, in particular in cities, into agroforestry systems we could live in the abundance our world lives spontaneously without destroying and making profit out of it. 

This kind of land caring has enormous advantages, in various fields. There are agroecological and territorial values, protecting and regenerating the health of the ecosystem: clean water and air, creation of habitats for biodiversity, fertility and soil structure improvement, carbon sequestration from the atmosphere and resilience to extreme events we will increasingly face due to climate change. Also, productive-economic qualities are the production of an abundance of useful, safe and quality resources (food, wood, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, medicines and bioenergy) increasing local self-sufficiency and the creation of healthy and sustainable jobs. In the social aspect it increases the prosperity of local communities, creating a new paradigm for people's participation in the ecology of cultural and natural environments and the possibility of inclusion of people, offering practical courses as well as sense of meaning and healing. 

An additional effect is a learning process of adaptation, of cultural evolution through the change of social and economic structures and the choices about resources and technologies. [6] The sense of belonging to community and ecosystem, on which we depend, it will grow hand in hand along with the energies and efforts that we dedicate to them.

[1] Bill Mollison, "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual" 

[2] Patrick Whitefield, "How to make a forest garden"

[3] Martin Crawford, "Creating a forest garden"

[4] https://youtu.be/Q_m_0UPOzuI

[5] Toby Hemenway, "Gaia's garden"

[6] Dave Jackie and Eric Toensmeier,"Edible Forest Gardens vol. 1"