What is Agroforestry?

When people in the U.S. think of farming, we often picture massive fields of the same plant. Acres upon acres of rows of mass-produced crops. As someone who grew up in southern Minnesota, farm fields are an incredibly common part of my life.

After living in a small farming town I have seen and learned a lot about monoculture and the hurdles in farming that way. It’s a massive undertaking, both in raw resources and technology required to keep things going. Still, monoculture may be good at yielding large amounts of crops, but it’s hardly the most efficient way to make food happen for the masses.

Agroforestry takes a considerably different approach. It’s a basic concept: Incorporate trees and a variety of yielding crops into a farm field to increase the effectiveness of the land to produce food.

Not only does Agroforestry potentially increase yields from individual plants, it can also increase the overall health of the ecosystem we are trying to sustain ourselves on. Trees have been known to be extremely beneficial to nurturing healthy environments, and the same can definitely be said for farming in many ways.