Agroforestry

The country-reporting guidelines define agrofor-estry as “a collective name for land-use systems where woody perennials ... are integrated in the farming system.” In practice, however, use of the term varies from country to country, reflecting local, national and regional contexts. Moreover, since the word rose to prominence in the late 1970s (Bene, Beall and Côte, 1977), its usage has evolved considerably. Van Noordwijk, Coe and Sinclair (2016) describe three successive para-digms: the first focused on plot-level interactions of trees with crops or livestock; the second based on a landscape-level understanding of agrofor-estry as a land use with explicit (positive) impacts (Leakey, 1996); and the third encompassing the combination and interface of all agriculture and forestry issues without reference to the institu-tional barriers that have traditionally separated them. Van Noordwijk, Coe and Sinclair (2016) propose a new definition of agroforestry that recognizes all three paradigms and can be par-aphrased as “land use that combines aspects of agriculture and forestry, including the agri-cultural use of trees.” Moreover, usage of the term by farmers and development practition-ers is often more specific than usage in scien-tific circles. Generalizations about the state of agroforestry are thus difficult to make, even at country level. The following paragraphs provide illustrative examples of the types of agroforestry practised in various regions of the world.