The role of agroforestry practices in a healthy farm

Abstract

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is developing a Healthy Farm Index that reflects a vision of sustainable farming. The index uses multiple indicators within ecological, environmental, and socio-economic categories to assess production, biodiversity, and ecosystem services provided by sustainable farm systems. The value of various agroforestry practices is reflected in these indicators as a component that improves farm profitability, conserves biological diversity, and enhances ecosystem services to and from agroecosystems. Agricultural systems are typically managed to maximize the provision of food and fiber. In contrast, proponents of sustainable agricultural systems seek to optimize long-term outcomes that include multiple components of agroecosystems and rewards for farmers who use sustainable practices. Understanding how shape, arrangement, and management of agroforestry landscape features affect different components of the farm system is important, as is recognizing tradeoffs. Understanding tradeoffs requires whole farm analysis and management. Management objectives help plan the shape and arrangement of landscape features. In this paper we will discuss how the use and arrangement of woody landscape features will be included in the Healthy Farm Index. Four participating organic farms in eastern Nebraska provide examples of the influence of woody land cover on the index scores. The structure of the index allows for the integration of current and future components. The index will be a mechanism for communicating interdisciplinary data toward farm practices and policy that optimize food production, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.