Iiicross Cutting Issues in Sfm

Agroforestry systems (AFS) research and development (R&D) has evolved dramatically over the last 30 years in four major ways. The emphasis has shifted from the description of systems to understanding how they function; from simple mixtures of few components at field and farm levels to more complex consideration of diversity at landscape and regional levels; from researcher-designed practices to farmer-designed practices (local knowledge); and from the quantification of their productivity to the economic valuation of the environmental services they provide. As these developments have unfolded, participatory methods have been developed to involve local people more fully in the R&D process, and models and modeling paradigms have been developed to integrate results across disciplines and scales. Greater understanding of how agroforestry systems function, coupled with a consideration of social processes that influence the behavior of people whose livelihoods depend on farming and forest resources, have paved the way for the development of policy geared towards more sustainable natural resource management. The quantification and valuing of environmental services from AFS, studies of actual and potential markets for AFS products, and efforts to integrate the results in the development and testing of new policies and regulations are now at the cutting edge of AFS R&D. Examples of emerging research foci that these developments have spawned include the role of farm trees in mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change; plant genetics in relation to conservation, improvement and the domestication of new commercial components; environmental sustainability; biological pest control; and landscape planning and management.