Agroforestry system Source: Google

Agro forestry is a sustainable land management system which increases the yield or the productivity of land combined with the production of crops, including the tree crops and forest plant or animals simultaneously or sequentially on same unit of land.  It mainly applies those management practices that are compatible with the cultural practices of the local people.

The system which combines the agriculture and forestry has been found to be more advantageous in recent days from the environmental, economical and social point of view. In rural areas forest has been the major source for sustaining their livelihood. It has been found that about 70 to 80 percent of rural people rely on the forest resources for their survival. This, also have been a major cause for broaching up the issue of deforestation in present days which is ultimately leading to the scary situation of climate change. Beside this, food insecurity and poverty have become a serious issue to be handled.  This is hampering the livelihood of rural poor people and posing a major challenge to a sustainable development of the many developing countries.

Including all these important challenges, a system of cultivation: Agro forestry system, which seems to hold a high promise as a bridge between food production and environment conservation have been developed.  Mitigation of biotic pressure on the forest, improvement and amelioration of micro climate, increment in soil quality due to constant addition of organic matter, mitigation of   soil erosion, reduction of deforestation, etc seems to be the environmental merits of agro forestry.

 Also, there is no doubt to the rural farmers in adopting this system because they are economically advantageous as it provide substantial cash income. Increment of soil quality and microclimate automatically leads to high productivity of the crops. Very low risk of crop failure due to incidence of insects, pest and disease is observed in the agro forestry system. Moreover, the utilization of the agro trees products as fruit, fuel hood, fodder, fertilizer, timber, etc helps in raising the economy of the farmer. 

Increased crop productivity combined with utilization of agro trees products obviously increases the farm level in a sustainable way. On adopting this system, quality of rural living could be considerably improved through sustained employment and higher income.  Agro forestry system, being a system based on the utilization of local resources can be easily adopted on small effort which can bring a huge change in the living standard of rural people and most importantly the environment conservation.