ABSTRACT
Agroforestry is an intensive land-management system that combines trees and shrubs with crops and livestock in time and space on a landscape level to achieve optimum benefits from biological interactions between soils, plants, and arthropods. Agroforestry systems (AFS) aim at balancing ecosystem demands to sustain diversity and productivity, while meeting multiple-use and sustainedyield needs of agriculture (Nair, 1993; Sanchez, 1995). Indigenous farmers in the developing world who usually understand land-use interactions in their local ecosystems often apply the systems successfully. Examples include the multistoried coffee-and cacao-based agroforests in Latin America and the complex homegardens in Asia. Many of the benefits of AFS are derived from the increased diversity of these systems compared with corresponding monocultures of crops or trees. Although little research has been conducted on pest interactions within AFS, agroforestry has been assumed to reduce pest outbreaks usually associated with monocultures. Although the effects of various agroforestry designs on pest populations can be of a varied nature (microclimatic, nutritional, natural enemies, etc.), regulating factors do not act in isolation from each other.
