Is Agroforestry The Key For Row Crops ?

By Author: Zeno Farm Machinery
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The stereotypical picture of American farmland probably looks a lot like this: rolling hills lined with rows upon rows of singular crops, perfectly spaced out for wheat harvester machine https://www.shellermachine.com/mini-rice-combine-harvester to cultivate, harvest and irrigate the fields.

It wasn’t always that way. In fact, historically, trees and crops co-existed on swaths of farmland together, retaining soil integrity and growing in harmony.

Now, a resurgence in agroforestry—the intentional mixture of forestry and agriculture on farms—is bringing that harmony back to fields across the globe.

Far from a new practice, agroforestry reflects ancient forms of farming much more closely than the monocropping systems that have become extremely prevalent across the United States. “The whole Eastern US in pre-European eras had a lot of agroforestry. That was how a lot of Indigenous groups managed the landscape,” says Cathy Day, a climate policy coordinator with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). Because of this, says Day, there’s huge potential to implement agroforesty practices ...
... throughout all Eastern US systems.

The canopy term of agroforestry covers six different practices, all centered around integrating trees and perennials into agricultural lands and systems. Some of the techniques, such as alley cropping and silvopasture, integrate trees and bushes into agricultural land. When alley cropping, farmers create rows of trees, forming protected alley ways in which to plant crops. Silvopasture adds trees into livestock pastures, resulting in benefits such as shade and shelter for herds.

Other techniques involve surrounding farmland with trees for added protection. Planting windbreaks or trees encompassing crop areas or livestock land protects from intense winds and other extreme weather. Riparian forest buffers, another agroforestry tool, use trees to separate managed land from waterways and wetlands, resulting in less soil erosion and filtration of pesticides, livestock waste and other potentially harmful agricultural runoff.

All agroforestry practices include the intentional integration of trees and perennials onto cropland in order to protect water quality, regenerate degraded lands and very effectively increase carbon sequestration. According to one North American analysis, agroforestry, even on a modest scale, could sequester enough carbon to offset 34 percent of US annual emissions from coal, oil and gas.

Programs both nationally and overseas are focused on helping farmers implement agroforestry techniques, hoping to spread both environmental and economical benefits. One, Trees for the Future, a non-profit that aims to provide hands-on agroforestry training and resources to farming communities, began in 1989. It focuses on farms in nine countries within sub-Saharan Africa.

Lindsay Cobb, the organization’s deputy director of marketing and communications, says the non-profit honed in on those regions to prove just how effective agroforestry can be, even in difficult growing conditions. “If we can show that our model works in the driest parts of West Africa, that’s really indicative of how effective it can be around the globe,” says Cobb.

In the US, where monocropping rules the ways of large-scale farming, the implementation of agroforestry practices is less common. Organizations such as the Savanna Institute, located in Wisconsin, are on a mission to change that.

The institute works with farmers and scientists to lay the groundwork for implementing agroforestry across the Midwest. Kaitie Adams, a community agroforester with the institute, says the focus on the Midwest is a very intentional one. “In places like Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, we see a ton of large-scale row crop agriculture,” she says.

Row crop agriculture refers to the technique of planting in deliberate, predetermined lines wide enough to allow irrigation, tilling and harvesting—usually using farm machinery,like grain cleaning machine https://www.shellermachine.com/grain-cleaner-machine . “That type of agriculture has been really good at producing a lot of calories, but not so great at building healthy soils, clean waterways and abundant food sources outside of starches and oils,” says Adams. “If we really want to talk about transforming all of agriculture, there’s no better place to start than the place where we see the most intensive amount of agriculture.”

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