Organic animal production has increased rapidly in recent years to keep up with the increasing consumer demand for organic meats. There are many guidelines and restrictions on what should go into the feedstuffs of organically farmed animals, from which difficulties arise when trying to ensure a well-balanced, nutritious diet without the use of any supplements. The book has been completely updated and revised to address how to formulate organic diets in situations where there is a declining supply of organic feed, as well as the feasibility of utilizing novel feedstuffs and their acceptability by consumers of organic meat products. Including the experiences of producers in relation to appropriate breeds and production systems for forage-based organic production, this book is an important read for researchers and students of organic food animal production, veterinary sciences and food; as well as food industry personnel and organic farmers.

Agroforestry in Sustainable Agricultural Systems examines the environmental and social conditions that affect the roles and performance of trees in field- and forest-based agricultural production systems. Various types of ecological settings for agroforestry are analyzed within temperate and tropical regions. The roles of soil, water, light, nutrient and pest management in mixed, annual, woody perennial and livestock systems are discussed. Important new case studies from around the world offer innovative strategies that have been used successfully in raising forests and tree products on a sustainable basis for commercial harvesting and for providing other environmental services in land conservation and watershed management.

Tree based production systems abound especially in the tropics. Despite the pervasiveness of such multipurpose “trees-outside-forest” resources, they have not attracted adequate attention in the development paradigms of many nation states. These multispecies production systems impact the ecosystem processes favourably. Yet, our understanding of the diversity attributes and carbon dynamics under agroforestry is not adequate. This book focuses on the role of multispecies production systems involving tree and crop species as a means for carbon sequestration and thereby reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Sixteen chapters organized into three broad sections titled: Measurement and Estimation, Agrobiodiversity and Tree Management, and Policy and Socioeconomic Aspects represent a cross section of the opportunities and challenges in current research and emerging issues in harnessing carbon sequestration potential of agroforestry systems.

Agroforestry has come of age during the past three decades. The age-old practice of growing trees and crops and sometimes animals in interacting combinations – that has been ignored in the single-commodity-oriented agricultural and forestry development paradigms – has been brought into the realm of modern land-use. Today agroforestry is well on its way to becoming a specialized science at a level similar to those of crop science and forestry science. To most land-use experts, however, agroforestry has a tropical connotation. They consider agroforestry as something that can and can only be identified with the tropics. That is a wrong perception. While it is true that the tropics, compared to the temperate regions, have a wider array of agroforestry systems and hold greater promise for potential agroforestry interventions, it is also true that agroforestry has several opportunities in the temperate regions too. Indeed, the role of agroforestry is now recognized in Europe as exemplified by this book, North America, and elsewhere in the temperate zone. Current interest in ecosystem management in industrialized countries strongly suggests that there is a need to embrace and apply agroforestry principles to help mitigate the environmental problems caused or exacerbated by commercial agricultural and forestry production enterprises.

Agroforestry is an age old practice throughout the world, but its recognition as a science is nearly three decades old. The scientific and systematic research on tree-crop interactions, in India, started in late 1970's and got major support and impetus with the establishment of All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Agroforestry in 1983 by ICAR. Today AICRP on Agroforestry has its network through out the country. Under AICRP and through the individual efforts of State Agricultural Universities, location specific agroforestry systems has been recommended to suit agro-climatic zones, landholdings and economic status of the region. Though extensive research had been done till date, but it is not available to scientific world, farming communities (who are the backbone of Indian rural development), students and inquisitive readers in one manuscript. This prompted the authors to club the information on agroforestry systems and practices prevailing in India in form of book. For the sake of convenience, agroforestry systems prevailing in India have been divided into four broad sections i) Agroforestry in India ii) Agroforestry system and practices in North, West and Central India iii) Agroforestry systems and practices in East, North-East and Southern India iv) Allied topics related to Agroforestry. Section one cover topics covering agroforestry experiences, research and extension efforts done in the last 25 years in India. Section two includes 13 chapters and section three covers 14 chapters wherein agroforestry research vis-à-vis agroclimatic zones of different states of India have been discussed. The last section comprising of 8 chapters includes topics related to role of agroforestry in soil conservation, women development; management of agroforestry; modeling; rehabilitation of mine spoils and breeding of agroforestry tree species.

This college-level textbook summarizes the state of current knowledge in the rapidly expanding field of agroforestry. The book, organized into 25 chapters in six sections, reviews the developments in agroforestry during the past 15 years and describes the accomplishments in the application of biophysical (plant and soil related) and socioeconomic sciences to agroforestry. Although the major focus of the book is on the tropics, where the practice and potential of agroforestry are particularly promising, the developments in temperate zone agroforestry are also discussed. This text is recommended for students, teachers, and researchers in agroforestry, farming systems, and tropical land use.

There is a growing interest and need for enhancing economic and policy research in agroforestry. So far, no single reference book provides adequate coverage of applied economic and policy analysis methodologies for agroforestry professionals. This book, written by the leading experts in economics and agroforestry, addresses this need with 14 case studies (covering all the continents of the world) that describe and demonstrate the application of a wide range of cutting edge economic analysis techniques to agroforestry system, policies and projects. The applied economic methodologies include enterprise/farm budget models, Faustmann models, Policy Analysis Matrix, production function approach, risk assessment models, dynamic programming, linear programming, meta-modeling, contingent valuation, attribute-based choice experiments, econometric modeling, and institutional economic analysis. This book provides a unique and valuable resource for assisting upper division undergraduate and graduate students and rural development professionals to conduct rigorous assessment of economic and policy aspects of agroforestry systems and to produce less biased and more credible information.

Agroforestry systems (AFS) are becoming increasingly relevant worldwide as society has come to recognize their multiple roles and services: biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, adaptation and mitigation of climate change, restoration of degraded ecosystems, and tools for rural development. This book summarizes advances in agroforestry research and practice and raises questions as to the effectiveness of AFS to solve the development and environmental challenges the world presents us today. Currently AFS are considered to be a land use that can achieve a compromise among productive and environmental functions. Apparently, AFS can play a significant role in rural development even in the most challenging socioeconomic and ecological conditions, but still there is a lot of work to do to reach these goals. Considerable funding is spent in projects directed to enhancing productivity and sustainability of smallholders forestry and agroforestry practices. These projects and programs face many questions and challenges related to the integration of traditional knowledge to promote the most suitable systems for each situation; access to markets for AFS products, and scaling up of successful AFS. These complex questions need innovative approaches from varying perspectives and knowledge bases. This book gathers fresh and novel contributions from a set of Yale University researchers and associates who intend to provide alternative and sometimes departing insights into these pressing questions. The book focuses on the functions that AFS can provide when well designed and implemented: their role in rural development as they can improve food security and sovereignty and contribute to provision of energy needs to the smallholders; and their environmental functions: contribution to biodiversity conservation, to increased connectivity of fragmented landscapes, and adaptation and mitigation of climate change. The chapters present conceptual aspects and case studies ranging from traditional to more modern approaches, from tropical as well as from temperate regions of the world, with examples of the AFS functions mentioned above.