Agroforestry for Sustainable Rural Development

Dear Colleagues,

Global policies are currently aware of environmental problems caused by intensive agricultural systems, and highlight that human society benefits not only from products delivered by ecosystems, but also from supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services.

Agroforestry is defined as the deliberate integration of woody vegetation with agricultural activities in the lower story. Agroforestry systems provide a higher total production per unit of land and more ecosystem services than woody-less agricultural lands.

Agroforestry practices fully respond to the need to implement multi-functional agriculture as requested by the most relevant international development strategies and agreements focused on sustainable development. Therefore, adequate policies promoting agroforestry practices and systems should be developed in order to increase agriculture and forestry sustainability.

Agroforestry bridges the gap that often separates agriculture and forestry by building integrated and complex systems that address both environmental and socio-economic objectives. Such systems can improve the resilience of agricultural practices, mitigate the impacts of climate change, prevent environmental degradation, improve agricultural productivity, increase carbon sequestration, generate cleaner water, and support healthy soil and healthy ecosystems while providing stable incomes and other benefits to human welfare. Although these claims are becoming more widely accepted as the body of agroforestry research increases, a systematic understanding of the evidence supporting them remains lacking.

The main aim of this Special Issue is to evidence the socio-economic and biophysical impacts of agroforestry systems and practices under different perspectives, involving multi-disciplinary research and addressing a broad range of outputs, thus creating an opportunity to share evidence and to exchange knowledge and ideas.

The Special Issue will cover all the disciplines dealing with agroforestry, particularly within the following research themes:

• Mitigating climate change with agroforestry. 
• Agroforestry and adaptation to climate change.
• Agroforestry for combating land degradation and desertification in dry areas.
• Agroforestry and biodiversity conservation.
• Agroforestry for water quality and watershed restoration.
• Social and cultural issues in agroforestry systems.
• Agroforestry education, training and promotion.
• Jobs, business, and finance linked to agroforestry.
• Economics of agroforestry.
• Agroforestry adoption and scaling up of agroforestry innovations.
• Value chains and certification of agroforestry products.
• Policies dealing with agroforestry.
• Agroforestry and landscapes.
• Urban and peri-urban agroforestry.
• Agroforestry germplasm.
• Agroforestry pests, diseases and weeds.
• Biophysical modelling in agroforestry systems.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Andrea Pisanelli
Dr. Marco Lauteri
Guest Editors

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• resilience
• socio-ecological systems
• on farm research
• innovation
• rural development
• stakeholder engagement