This chapter provides principles, literature and a case study about the economics of agroforestry. We examine necessary conditions for achieving efficiency in agroforestry system design and economic analysis tools for assessing efficiency and adaptability of agroforestry. The tools presented here (capital budgeting, linear progranuning, production frontier analysis and risk analysis) can help d...

Although advocates of agroforestry have promoted soil conservation as one of its primary benefits, empirical estimates of these benefits have been lacking due to temporal and spatial complexity of agroforestry systems and soil resource dynamics. This study aims to reduce this gap by designing and testing a three stage farm level productivity methodology for economic evaluation of soil conservat...

Agroforestry is a joint forest production system whereby land, labor, and capital inputs are combined to produce trees and agricultural crops (and/or livestock) on the same unit of land. Although existing for centuries (maybe millennia) as an array of traditional land use practices in the tropics, agroforestry emerged in the late 1970s as a modern, improved tropical land use system suitable for...

1. Humans as Parts of Forest and Grassland Ecosystems 1.1 Human Subsistence in Forests and Grasslands Based on Gathering and Hunting 1.2 Transition of Natural Communities into Seminatural Communities 2. The Development of Agroecosystems—Agroforestry was the Origin 2.1. The Transition from Food Collection to Food Production 2.2. Agroforestry—What Does it Mean and How Does it Work? 2.3. Nutrient ...

This research was conducted in six typical villages of Northern Bangladesh. A sample of 170 farmers was selected. Research indicates that the farmers practising agroforestry own small farms and the income of agroforestry helps them to reduce their poverty, maintain their socio-economic needs and sustain their livelihoods. Agroforestry is not a new concept in the study area. The people have been...

Labile fractions of soil organic matter (SOM) respond rapidly to land management practices and can be used as a sensitive indicator of changes in SOM. However, there is little information about the effect of agroforestry practices on labile SOM fractions in semiarid regions of China. In order to test the effects of land use change from monocropping to agroforestry systems on labile SOM fraction...

--Agroforestry is the deliberate introduction of multipurpose woody perennials (MWPs) into agroecosystems for the purpose of enhancing agricultural productivity, natural resource conservation, and human environments. This introduction promotes the biodiversity within the agroecosystem and thus its sustainability. This biodiversity is only a fraction of its potential due to the limited number an...

Agroforestry has large potential for carbon (C) sequestration while providing many economical, social, and ecological benefits via its diversified products. Airborne lidar is considered as the most accurate technology for mapping aboveground biomass (AGB) over landscape levels. However, little research in the past has been done to study AGB of agroforestry systems using airborne lidar data. Foc...

A paired watershed study consisting of agroforestry (trees plus grass buffer strips), contour strips (grass buffer strips), and control treatments with a corn (Zea mays L.)-soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] rotation was used to examine treatment effects on runoff, sediment, and nutrient losses. During the (1991-1997) calibration and subsequent three-year treatment periods, runoff was measured in...

Agroforestry practices can improve the adaptive capacity and resilience of local farming and subsistence systems while providing livelihood benefits to households. However, scaling up of agroforestry technology has often proved difficult. Many studies have been carried out to explain the lack of tangible impact, based mainly on formal household/farm surveys comparing characteristics of non-adop...