Fighting Climate Change: Reinventing Agroforestry Into “Regenerative Agroforestry” – Frank A Hilario, Philippines, 15Jan22

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Yes, we are hopeful when it comes to meeting the challenges of climate change that brings super-typhoons like Odette – we can blunt the winds and absorb the rains by behaving intelligently with our farms and gardens. I am looking at a science I have just reinvented and now call Regenerative Agroforestry (RegenAgro). Growing the soil first, followed by growing food & wood at the same time in the same place. Farm & Forest In One.

Invented pre-1900s, time to reinvent Agroforestry! On this subject, American experts Gary Bentrup and Kate MacFarland, both of the USDA National Agroforestry Center, write (June 2020, FS.usda.gov):

Adapting to climate change requires a comprehensive approach that involves public and private lands. Agroforestry is the intentional mixing of trees and shrubs into crop and animal production systems to create environmental, economic, and social benefits. This private land management approach provides opportunities for shared stewardship on agricultural and forested lands, including those adjacent to public lands. Agroforestry allows land managers to integrate productivity and profitability with environmental stewardship that will contribute to healthy and sustainable landscapes.

Mr Bentrup & Ms Kate are telling us that to combat climate change, we need to involve public & private properties with a common approach: agroforestry. We grow trees along with crops and animals in the same location for the good and goods they bring to the surroundings, our residences and business places. They say that thus, agroforestry enables us to “contribute to healthy and sustainable landscapes.”

“Sustainable landscapes” – I want more! Instead of sustainable agroforestry (SustainAgro), we can make farms & fields beyond sustainable via my reinvention: regenerative agroforestry (RegenAgro).

What’s the difference? Sustainable is being technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable – while regenerative goes beyond sustainable, encouraging & supporting regrowths of biological elements: soil, all kinds of plants and organisms that by simply living their lives promote biological growth of other species, from microorganisms (such as viruses & bacteria) to macroorganisms (earthworms). When the invisible and visible creatures grow in farm or field, they renew the soil, and thus begins the revival of the whole area, up to and including the trees.

Anytime, RegenAgro beats SustainAgro! A whole village comes alive!

Contrast:
Agroforestry brings us 2 major items: food and wood.
Agriculture brings us only food.
Forestry brings us only wood.

The above image of “Agroforest” from the USDA is a beautiful combined illustration of the uses and/or values of an agroforest or mini-forest: (a) alley cropping, (b) windbreaks, (c) riparian forest buffers, (d) silvipasture, and (e) forest farming – where “alley cropping” is planting a crop in-between rows of another crop, “riparian” refers to the bank of a stream, and “silvipasture” means “forest” plus “grazing.”

While we await for the whole civilized world to work out as one in curbing climate change, let us practice Regenerative Agroforestry. Let us cultivate in the city and countryside farm-forests for protecting ourselves from typhoons – in the meanwhile enjoying the ambiance and good food showing up in the in-between different crops growing with delight!@517