Overview
Agroforestry, a term coined in the early 1970s, has made its place in all developed/developing countries of the world and is now recognized as an important approach to ensuring food security and rebuilding resilient rural environments. India has been a leader in agroforestry. The South and Southeast Asia region comprising India is often described as the cradle of agroforestry. Almost all forms of agroforestry systems exist across India in ecozones ranging from humid tropical lowlands to high-altitude and temperate biomes, and perhumid rainforest zones to parched drylands. The country ranks foremost among nations for enormous diversity and long tradition of the practice of agroforestry,as well as in fostering scientific developments on the subject. Agroforestry applies to private agricultural and forest lands and communities that also include highly erodible, flood-prone, economically marginal and environmentally sensitive lands. The typical situation is agricultural, where trees are added to create desired benefits. Agroforestry allows for the diversification of farm activities and makes better use of environmental resources. Due to an increase in the population of human and cattle, there is increasing demand of food as well as fodder, particularly in developing countries such as India. So far, no policy deals with\xa0specifics in agroforestry in India. But the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has been discussing the scope of a potential National Agroforestry Policy. However, evolving a policy requires good and reliable datasets from different corners of the country on the subject matter. This synthesis volume containing 13 chapters is an attempt to collate available information into different system ecologies, problems and solutions, and converge them to support policy development.
