Agroforestry Systems
Agroforestry Systems will be playing a critical role in the UN Global Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. We are working on cocoa, coffee, and rubber agroforestry systems to better understand their contribution to the wellbeing of people and the environment.
The Global Agroforestry Network
Agroforestry systems are diversified cocoa, coffee, and rubber cropping systems, primarily farmed by smallholders. Agroforestry can enhance climate resilience, maintain biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services, and secure rural livelihoods. While much work has been done in agroforestry research, integration of data and questions across multiple geographies is much needed to answer some of the most pressing question of how some of these benefits can scale.
We initiated the Global Agroforestry Network in 2020 to promote global and multidisciplinary work across stakeholders to better understand agroforestry systems, their functions and how agroecological production strategies can help to overcome sustainability challenges in cocoa, coffee, and rubber production.
The Global Agroforestry Network is coordinated by Dr. Manuel Toledo-Hernández in our group.
The way forward
Our group is leading and is involved in multiple project of the Global Agroforestry Network (GAN). We are working on the environmental and social benefits of cocoa pollination globally. For this, we are using our Computer Vision based monitoring devices and the site network of the GAN to better understand pollinator ecology and the potential to increase cocoa yields in sustainable agroforestry systems. We are also involved in the first assessment of the effects of rubber agroforestry on climate change, biodiversity conservation, and livelihood support. Lastly, we have just launched a new initiative to map cocoa and coffee agroforestry systems globally.
