Agroforestry: Pulling it all together to meet the demands for bioenergy and beyond in agroecosystems

Background/Question/Methods .“..the overexploitation of one ecosystem service can lead to a disservice, a loss, or a reduction in benefit from another ecosystem service.”  Covich (2004)

“Landscapes are changed by humans, to create added values. All too often such decisions are driven by short-term economic and social goals, neglecting the fact that landscapes are the template for a series of landscape services that are a condition of human life and welfare.”  Opdam (2007)

“We have entered an era in which agriculture supplies not only food, feed and fiber but also fuel.” Robertson et al. (2008)

Houston, we have a problem!

The quest to maximize crop yields has led to the simplification of our agricultural lands; resulting in many ecological functions becoming decoupled. We are now rediscovering once again that landscape diversity is essential if agroecosystems are going to be able to meet society’s demands for the many other ecosystem services beyond food, such as water quality, habitat, greenhouse mitigation, and now, production of bioenergy feedstocks. Since the sustainability and health of our nation’s lands will ultimately be determined in how bioenergy along with the many other demands are handled, we need to find new and innovative ways to better connect energy, food production and natural resource objectives on these agricultural lands and beyond. 

Results/Conclusions

Agroforestry affords us the means to create relatively small but diversified, multipurpose plantings that when strategically located within the landscape can support many of our energy objectives, as well as the other services being demanded from these same lands – while leaving the dominant land use unchanged. This diversified land-use system offers ways to augment bioenergy feedstock production while mitigating the adverse effects inherent in the conventional production of crops. At the same time, agroforestry can create critical wildlife habitat for game species to pollinators, sequester carbon to offset greenhouse gasses, and provide functions necessary for the protection of water and soil resources. The transformation to a more sustainable society will require a paradigm shift from maximization to optimization of multiple services.  Using science-based tools, we can guide this transformation with appropriately placed and designed agroforestry practices.