Agroforestry for a Happy Future
Posted on 18 June 2010
Bristol’s leading agroforestry expert, Adrian Morley, makes the case for our city-regions to focus just as hard on managing their biospheres, as their material flows, on the journey towards zero carbon:
Is the only sustainable security we should be thinking about is our dependency on the practically unrenewable lithosphere – the Earth’s crust? Of course not, we also need to focus on using what’s growing on the Earth to provide for our needs – the biosphere.
So far we can only manage the biosphere by using lots of energy, water and chemicals, to achieve less productive and severely degraded systems than what would have naturally been there anyway. Quite simply we need to stop digging up the Earth’s crust and spewing it all over the place (including the Gulf of Mexico), and start concentrating on managing the biosphere in order to promote its health and to provide for us. If we need to tap into the Earth, let’s be very sensible and conservative in what we use it for.
What are our needs? Is economic growth a real need for our existence, or is it a result of charging interest and making commercial profit on money creation? Is food security a real need, or is it food waste in a retail infrastructure that is the issue to be addressed? Is energy security a real concern, or is addressing consumerism; do we need disposable plastic toy soldiers for our children, or DIY tools that will never do the job that they are supposed to? Do we have to shelve too much innovation because it does not achieve the target bonuses or dividends for shareholders?
Do we have as a species the capacity to raise our consciousness and actions above greed, fear and ultimately war? And why are economic and political requirements the main drivers that define net human activity?
Can we use the biosphere sustainability to produce our needs? The answer is yes, agroecology and agroforestry provide both resource and food needs very sustainability and very efficiently.
So why do we suffer technological fixes that need constant evolution and lack systemic insight, when nature has already provided us the answers? The answer probably lies in the end report that will be produced when the human race fails to survive. Jared Diamond has fortunately already written this report for us: ‘Collapse- How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive’. Deforestation is a main component of civilisation failure: it’s a bit like an Inuit knocking down his igloo in midwinter -a very stupid thing to do.
Consider the benefits of agroforestry:
- increased productivity
- less energy use
- nutrient and water hydraulic lift
- increased natural disease and pest regulation
- increased biodiversity
- restoration of ecology
- soil protection, restoration and remediation
- increased genetic pool with enhanced resilience
- flood defence, water regulation and purification
- carbon sequestration
- wind protection
- landscape enhancement
- multi-resource yields from same parcel of land
Can agroforestry be integrated into current agricultural practices with little disruption? – Yes. Silvoarable agroforestry can incorporate the use of modern machinery and practice if so desired, but also attracting the added bonuses and benefits of agroforestry. This practice has an arable crop alley sandwiched between tree lines. Silvopastoral agroforestry can quite simply be livestock in an orchard, hens in woods, an old and to recently, before EU subsidy changes, common practice. Or agroforestry can replicate a whole forest ecosystem and provide a vast array of diverse resources.
So what do our sustainable cities rely on, considering the masses from them dictate land-use? Can rural and urban integrated transition work together?
The UK’s Royal Agricultural College, Bristol City Council, the Centre for Alternative Technology and others are all collaborating together on a Zero Carbon Bristol event on 29th June. In the heart of a city, agroforestry will feature in an event designed to take zero carbon seriously and bridge the dialogue gap between urban and rural communities.
Agroforestry can replicate a forest ecosystem to provide diverse resources, or be as simple as crops between tree lines and mixing livestock in an orchard or woods.
3 responses to Agroforestry for a Happy Future
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Lots of good insights here. Are there any numbers available that would help to make a convincing argument?
Regarding the orchard, I think productivity could be higher and sustainability easier to achieve with current populations by growing other stuff between the trees. Livestock (net consumers and emitters) are a less preferable option (for converting grass to human food). Is there research on the most productive things to grow between trees in the UK?
Prof Martin Wolfe is the UKs leading expert on silvoarable agroforestry (crops between trees). A google search on ‘Wakelyns Farm, agroforestry’ will provide a start. The French have carried out more silvoarable research. A French based EU research centre SAFE, has the best temperate EU knowledge. Use this link http://www.ensam.inra.fr/safe/english/index.htm or Google search ‘SAFE agroforestry’. Regards silvopastoral (animals, hens etc in orchard), restricting animal consumption is another argument altogether. Personally I don’t eat meat. Production is higher than conventional agriculture in agroforestry it uses ecological principles; the system does not push against the natural state/ will of the planet. Energy is needed to push against the flow of nature/ ecology. This is more a systemic thought approach as oppose a reductionist. Productivity is also hard to define and measure. Is job creation part of productivity? Or is fossil fuel use included in measuring productivity? – agrochemical use? Or even ecosystem services provided by the system? I know of current UK research which is being undertaken to include a complete/ acurate measure of productivity from silvoarable agroforestry, but this is not yet completed. For detailed scientific research Agroforestry Systems journal published by Springer is very good, but is not UK specific. Leeds Uni, Royal Agricultural College, and Cranfield Uni, undertook silvoarable research 20 years ago, but the aim was not to produce food in the long term, and to allow the trees to develop into timber, making crop production in that system inviable. Silvoarable agroforestry is starting to be practiced commercially in the UK, with wheat and other arable crops in rotation, and fruit tree lines, typically apple for juice and eating.
You can now also watch Adrian’s talk about agroforestry at the Zero Carbon Bristol conference (27th June 2010) here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sJf69OMrDg