Landscape-scale efforts often involve linking land uses and asking people to manage their land for more than one outcome. Agroforestry, the intentional combination of agriculture and trees to create sustainable farming and ranching systems, provides important opportunities for managing for multiple outcomes and bringing agricultural, forestry, and community partners together. 

For example, riparian buffer corridors can provide wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, and flood control all while improving water quality; forest farming can keep forestland intact and maintain native forest plant communities while providing an income source to a forest landowner; and windbreaks can increase regional biodiversity and support pollinator populations while protecting a crop from wind damage and soil erosion. 

Landscape-scale approaches only make agroforestry implementation more effective, facilitating resource sharing, mutual learning, specialty crop cooperative development, and improved environmental performance from these practices.

 

The USDA National Agroforestry Center (NAC) is a partnership of US Forest Service State & Private Forestry, US Forest Service Research & Development, and the Natural Resource Conservation Service. NAC's mission is to accelerate the adoption of agroforestry through a national network of partners. NAC researchers synthesize information and provide tools for land managers, such as AgBufferBuilder, a GIS-based computer program used for designing vegetation buffers around agricultural fields, and the Conservation Buffer Guide, designed for planning buffers in rural and urban landscapes. NAC also provides technology transfer assistance through publications and workshops. 

NAC has a new email update you can subscribe to called Agroforestry Connection, which shares information on agroforestry-related publications, events, and other items of interest. It is published about six times per year. To subscribe, visit http://eepurl.com/4HKB1 or the NAC home page.