ABSTRACT

Agroforestry is an approach to landuse that incorporates trees into farming systems, and allows for the production of trees and crops or livestock from the same piece of land in order to obtain economic, eco­ logical, environmental, and cultural benefits (Gordon and Newman, 1997). Agroforestry has its roots in the developing world, where lack of land resources in the presence of high population growth necessitated the development of novel and simultaneous wood and food production systems by indigenous peoples. In North America, many different types of agroforestry have been employed historically (Gordon, Newman, and Williams, 1997), but the vast potential for economic and environ­ mental benefits attributed to agroforestry have yet to be realized on a large scale. The main types of agroforestry practices currently being re­ searched in many areas of North America are windbreaks and shelterbelts, silvipastoral systems (animals, pasture and trees), integrated riparian forest systems, forest farming systems, and tree-based intercropping systems (crops grown between widely spaced tree rows) (Gordon and Newman, 1997; Garrett et al., 2000). These systems have also been ex­ tensively researched in southern Ontario, Canada and are summarized in Table 1.