Featured Issue
Working Trees Series: Living Snow Fence
Living Snow fences can be an effective way to reduce blowing and drifting snow as well as a cost-effective means to reduce highway maintenance, improve scenic quality along roadways and create habitat for wildlife and pollinators.
Featured Issue
Inside Agroforestry
Windbreaks: These aren't your grandfather's shelterbelts
As we consider the role of windbreaks in today's agriculture we need to reflect on the roots of windbreak application in North America.
Featured Issue
+H: The Human Considerations in the Adoption of Agroforestry
Decisions to adopt or reject, modify or abandon are shaped and reshaped by a myriad of human factors when considering the adoption of agroforestry.
Featured Publication
National Agroforestry Center
Update 2011
NAC's annual report is available here:
Featured Publication
CSA News Magazine
Agroforestry:
A growing science seeks to boost its practice
The Crop Science Society of America, CSA, News Magazine cover story, "Agroforestry, A growing science seeks to boost its practice." Written by Madeline Fisher, it provides a good history and present state of the science and practice of agroforestry in the U.S.
The cover story is available to non-CSA members here.
CSA News is the official magazine for members of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Sciences Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
Featured Publication
Pine Straw: A profitable agroforestry enterprise
Pine straw (fresh,
un-decomposed pine
needles that have
fallen on the forest
floor) is a valuable
woodland resource
in the southern pine
region of the United
States.
NAC's Blog
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The North American Agroforestry Conference (NAAC)
The 13th biennial NAAC will be held in Charleston, Prince Edward Island, Canada on June 19-21, 2013.Since the first conference in 1989 in Guelph, Ontario, NAAC is one of the most important opportunities to share information, collaborate and network on a variety of agroforestry topics, including shelterbelts, riparian buffers, silvopasture, alley cropping, forest farming and more. Up to 200 researchers and practitioners from across North America will meet for three days of keynote addresses, technical sessions and field tours.
The venue for the NAAC will be the University of PEI, which features excellent meeting rooms, comfortable and affordable accommodations and easy access to the city.
Watch here for more conference details. Enquiries about the conference may be directed to agroforestry@agr.gc.ca
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Timber Tax Basis Webinar
A free webinar designed to give a detailed and clear understanding of Timber Tax Basis will be held Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012, from noon to 1:30 p.m. EST.
This webinar will be of interest to consulting foresters, agency staff and leaders, land managers, landowners, CPAs, tax attorneys, enrolled agents and registered tax preparers.
The USDA Forest Service, NC State Forestry Extension, Southern Regional Extension Forestry Office and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension are sponsoring this event.
For detailed webinar access instructions, please go to:
Click here for more information
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USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map online
The 2012 USDA PLant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location. See the this year's map here:
http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/Default.aspx -
Changes in climate may impact walnut trees
The online magazine ScienceDaily is reporting that a study by a Purdue University research team found that “the warmer, drier summers and extreme weather events considered possible as the climate changes would be especially troublesome — possibly fatal — for walnut trees.”
The magazine reported that "(O)ver five years, Douglass Jacobs, a professor of forestry and natural resources, and Martin-Michel Gauthier, a former doctoral student under Jacobs who is now a research scientist in the Ministry of Natural Resources in Quebec, studied the physiology of walnut trees, which are economically significant in Indiana for their lumber and veneer, and in other areas for their nuts. They found that the trees are especially sensitive to particular climates." See the study abstract and preview at: Annals of Forest Science
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Photo by Anne Sherwood for The New York Times -
A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees
By JIM ROBBINS
Published: November 21, 2011Published in the Nov. 22, 2011, Science section of The New York Times
HELENA, Mont. — On a forested hill in the mountains north of Montana’s capital, beneath a canopy of pine and spruce, Marc and Gloria Flora have planted more than 300 smaller trees, from apple and pear to black walnut and chestnut.
Beneath the trees are layers of crops: shrubs like buffalo berries and raspberries, edible flowers like day lilies, vines like grapes and hops, and medicinal plants, including yarrow and arnica.
Turkeys and chickens wander the two-acre plot, gobbling hackberries and bird cherries that have fallen from trees planted in their pen, and leaving manure to nourish the plants.
For the Floras, the garden is more than a source of food for personal use and sale. Ms. Flora, an environmental consultant and former supervisor for the United States Forest Service, is hoping it serves as a demonstration project to spur the growth of agroforestry — the science of incorporating trees into traditional agriculture.
The extensive tree canopy and the use of native plants, she says, make the garden more resilient in the face of a changing climate, needing less water, no chemical fertilizers and few, if any, pesticides. “It’s far more sustainable” than conventional agriculture, she said.
The idea is to harness the ecological services that trees provide. “Agroforestry is not converting farms to forest,” said Andy Mason, director of the Forest Service’s National Agroforestry Center. “It’s the right tree in the right place for the right reason.”
The Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency, began an initiative this year to encourage agroforestry. -
Forests: A potential solution in fight against hunger
More attention to forest foods ans services can improve food security in poor nations.
The role of forests in providing timber and other wood products must not overshadow their important contribution to feeding many of the world's poorest communities, a group of international forest organizations and secretariats said today.
According to the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), of which FAO is an active member, forests can play an even greater role in feeding the world and helping farmers cope with climate change, but their potential to do so is not being fully realized.
With nearly one billion people in the world suffering from chronic hunger, the CPF said the potential of forests and trees to improve food and nutritional security needs more attention from national and regional policymakers and international development agencies. More at: http://bit.ly/vBwIRj
