Agroforestry: Mapping a Greener Future

New Mapping Tool Points to Agroforestry Potential in U.S. Midwest for Environmental and Economic Benefits
Agroforestry, or the cultivation of trees in agricultural systems, has gone unnoticed in the U.S. Midwest even though it can provide environmental and economic advantages. A new mapping tool, created by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), points out where agroforestry would be most useful, and its use will increase throughout the region.

Agroforestry activities, such as planting windbreaks, planting trees in pastures, or intercropping tree crops and annual crops, provide a variety of benefits including enhancing soil quality, erosion reduction, enhancing water quality, and generating added income for farmers. Adoption levels in the Midwest are low. Contributing in part to this has been the absence of coordinated research that addresses environmental, economic, and social considerations.

The new research, which appears in Environmental Research Letters, seeks to fill this gap by charting regions in the Midwest where agroforestry would be most beneficial. The tool not only identifies regions that would be suitable for agroforestry but also assists farmers in determining where the practice would be economically feasible and socially acceptable.

Mapping Agroforestry Potential
Researchers, directed by Sarah Castle, sought to create a decision support tool combining various layers of information, including environmental suitability, economic viability, and social acceptance of agroforestry. Land managers and policymakers can use this tool to determine the advantages of agroforestry for a given location in accordance with their own priorities.

They also interviewed agroforestry experts such as those from Illinois Extension, the USDA National Agroforestry Center, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Savanna Institute. The interviews were useful in giving recommendations on how to improve the analysis and make the tool more applicable to the real world.

The product is a map that indicates where agroforestry has the potential to mitigate soil loss, enhance water quality, and mitigate climate change in the Midwest. The map also indicates estimated carbon sequestration that can be realized if agroforestry practices are applied on the best land in the Midwest.

Environmental and Economic Benefits
Agroforestry may have vast environmental potential, particularly where conventional crop production is not sustainable. The study estimates that if agroforestry were practiced on only 5% of Midwestern cropland, it might be able to sequester potentially between 43 million tons of CO2e annually. This would be much higher than the cover crop carbon sequestration potential, which may have the potential to store up to about 8.4 million tons of CO2e on the same land annually.

Besides the ecological advantage, agroforestry can also be a lucrative venture for farmers. Crop diversification and integration of trees in their operations allow farmers to generate new income sources. For instance, forest products such as wood, nuts, and fruits are substitute incomes. Windbreak and riparian buffer agroforestry systems can also contribute to increased cropping using the fields' protection from wind and water erosion.

The map tool also has economic factors to allow users to evaluate economic viability of agroforestry in terms of various tree species and planting methods. Farmers can modify the analysis parameters so that economic return, environmental factor, or a combination of both takes precedence.

Agility in Agroforestry Techniques
Agroforestry systems are highly diversified and provide flexibility to landowners to adapt their strategy to suit their objective and resource endowment. For example, windbreaks could be an affordable low-cost option for farmers in windy areas, whereas advanced systems such as alley cropping or silvopasture would involve greater investment and technological inputs.

One of the study's main findings is that agroforestry is not necessarily a completely new shift of a farm operation. Farmers can integrate agroforestry into farm management plans step by step, and it is a dynamic and adaptive strategy. For instance, in areas with high winds, windbreaks are planted at field boundaries to lower wind erosion, and silvopasture or alley cropping would be suitable for other environments.

The authors state that agroforestry is flexible and can be practiced on various scales, thereby being appealing to both small and large landowners. Small-scale land uses can also contribute toward generating very high economic as well as environmental returns.

A Tool for Policymakers and Landowners
The researchers' decision support tool is available online and free, and it offers an efficient means for policymakers, conservationists, and landowners. It enables users to tailor their analysis and create maps based on targeted regions or goals, facilitating the identification of agroforestry opportunities at the local level.

This tool will have the potential to enable policymakers to determine where agroforestry is needed most and where it can provide the greatest contribution, which will inform land use and conservation policy. The tool will also enable landowners to make informed decisions on whether and how to implement agroforestry on their land.

Conclusion
Agroforestry has the potential to transform farming in the U.S. Midwest by yielding both environmental and economic benefits. The new mapping tool developed by UIUC researchers is an effective tool to propagate agroforestry practices across the region. The incorporation of environmental, social, and economic considerations in the tool helps determine where agroforestry will be most valuable and provides landowners and policymakers with the information they need to make informed decisions.

The paper, "Mapping the Social-Ecological Suitability of Agroforestry in the U.S. Midwest," is released in Environmental Research Letters [DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/adab09].