AGROFORESTRY is best for mountainous regions like the Cordillera.
But the practice will remain unappreciated by the region’s land-use planners and yes our local agriculturists, foresters, and farmers unless they revisit its definition and current practice.
And why is that needful? Simply, it is because what is not appreciated will not be sustained, is not used, ultimately disregarded, and that is bad.
This article is hardly a treatise on agroforestry and its importance to the Cordillera as a livelihood strategy and pursuit. A paper can serve that purpose well. A column like this could simply encourage, challenge, and enlighten its readers on the importance of the subject to their existence.
All these years, in my encounters with local farmers and agroforestry practitioners, I have yet to come across with a clear definition of the term underpinning its pursuit and practice in the region.
The current pursuit and practice of agroforestry are largely about the planting of fruit and industrial trees in some individual and communal plots.
What I have seen in the practice of “agroforestry” does not satisfy what I seek, which is the evolution and development of a profitable and useful interface of agriculture and forestry land-use systems, strategies and practices in our mountainous region.
What we have on the ground, like the “pine under coffee” technology developed by the Benguet State University (BSU) was a very promising start. It probably was an eye-opener to the problems besetting our cloud forests arising from population pressure and the production of food.
The term agroforestry is one simple technical jargon that tells you what it is – the combination of agriculture and forestry “to create an integrated and sustainable land-use system.
I will borrow the definition of agroforestry that the International Council for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) has been using for the purpose of showing what we are missing in its practice and pursuit in our mountainous domains.
“Agroforestry is a sustainable land-management system which increases the overall yield of the land, combines the production of crops (including tree crops) and forest plants and/or animals simultaneously or sequentially, on the same unit of land, and applies management practices that are compatible with the cultural practices of the local population,” (King and Chandler, 1978).
The definition summarizes the current and historical pursuit of agroforestry around the globe. Currently, it specifically calls on deliberate human interventions and innovative integration of profitable strategies and management systems of growing forest trees, fruit and industrial trees, agricultural crops, and livestock together. It is not simply about the growing of trees for timber or other products (forestry), It is not also about “wild harvesting,” or collecting wildly grown plants from a forest, because the harvester has not participated in the intentional management of the entire system.
The pursuit of agroforestry in other countries has demonstrated that besides timber, a wide variety of plants can be grown in a forest to produce natural or processed (value-added) edible, herbal, medicinal, decorative and craft products.
In agroforestry literature, you come across the terms “agroforestry systems” and “agroforestry practices/technologies” that are often used interchangeably.
These practices are categorized into three basic types of agroforestry, i.e., (1) agrisilvicultural systems (trees and crops), (2) Silvopastoral systems (trees and animals/pasture), and (3) agrosilvopastoral systems (trees and crops and animals/pasture). A fourth category, “Other” is necessary as there are agroforestry systems that do not strictly fall into these three basic categories, e.g., apiculture and tree systems, aquaforestry, and multi-story woodlots.
If you ask me which of these practices is the most profitable and appropriate for the Cordillera, I would not really know. I have seen some agroforestry practice here and there, but that is all there is to it.
But that question highlights the importance of agroforestry and the need to evolve a practical and useful definition and develop profitable practices and strategies for the Cordillera.
The alternative to agroforestry in a land such as ours is to clear-cut the mountains of its forest cover for agriculture, housing, and industrial use. When that happens, the consequences as the previous Super Typhoons have shown us this year, in these times of climate change, is obvious.