Agroforestry and organic agriculture
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Agroforestry and organic agriculture Adolfo Rosati
. Robert Borek . Stefano Canali
Received: 23 October 2019 / Accepted: 10 October 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Current conventional agriculture is considered unsustainable and inadequate to address great societal challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution, food security, dependence on fossil energy as well as the decline of natural resources and biodiversity. Many of these problems are related to agricultural specialization (i.e. monoculture) and the consequent simplification of the agroecosystem. In this respect, efforts aimed at improving individual agronomic techniques and at increasing the useefficiency of external inputs (e.g. synthetic inputs, fossil fuels), without modifying the structure and functions of the whole system, appear to be insufficient to achieve sustainability in most conventional and intensive farming systems. Current organic farming systems adopting the so-called input substitution approach remain intensive and highly specialized and not necessarily able to significantly improve their sustainability. This would require system
A. Rosati (&) Research Centre for Olive, Fruit and Citrus Crops, CREA, Spoleto, PG, Italy e-mail: [email protected] R. Borek IUNG-PIB, Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation – State Research Institute, Puławy, Poland S. Canali Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment, CREA, Rome, Italy
diversification and redesign of the agroecosystem to increase the spatial and temporal diversification of all its components and promote positive ecological relationships between them. Agroforestry is an agricultural approach based on the diversification of the agroecosystem production components (woody perennials, such as trees or shrubs, plus crops and/or livestock) and on the intensification of the agroecological relationships between these components. As such, it has transformative potential, providing an opportunity for increasing the sustainability of organic farming. In this article we review how the adoption of agroforestry practices could contribute to increasing sustainability in organic farming, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of this adoption. Keywords Agroecology Organic farming Sustainability Crops Livestock
The current crisis of specialized agricultural systems It is widely acknowledged that the conventional agricultural model, originating from the green revolution and based on crop specialization and on massive use of external inputs and fossil energy, is facing a deep crisis (IPES-Food 2016). This agricultural model is considered unsustainable from social and
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environmental points of view and incapable of solving great challenges to sustainability, such as the decline of natural resources and biodiversity, climate change, food security and dependence on fossil energy (Geiger et al. 2010; Godfray et al. 2010; Tittonell 2014). Furthermore, specialized agri-food systems do not en
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