The agroforestry continuum: Integrating nature back into farming

Today it may seem like there’s a stark contrast between town and countryside; however, there has never been a hard line where civilization begins and wilderness ends. A subtle line always connects the largest city to the deepest forest. Agroforestry enters this conversation not as nostalgia or radical environmentalism but as a design system capable of reconnecting people and nature across the entire landscape continuum.

Agroforestry is the intentional integration of trees, crops and livestock, rooted in Indigenous and Diasporan knowledge. Self-sustaining systems intentionally utilize native plants within the practice. In a recent webinar titled “Intro to Agroforestry Design Systems,” Tabitha Bugg of Virginia State University’s Small Farm Outreach Program invited participants to rethink how landscapes are planned and stewarded. The objective was clear: Determine how agroforestry systems strengthen communities, build resilient landscapes, develop the next generation and help us answer the question “What if every landscape was designed to benefit both humans and nature?”

As human populations continue to grow, risk factors can affect things like water quality, food production, pollinator numbers and more if our environment isn’t taken care of properly. As Bugg stated, “We’ve been given a task to steward this world … Thoughtful stewardship is no longer optional. It’s essential.”

Holistically, agroforestry integrates people, ecology, tradition, education and economy. While USDA recognizes its five core practices (forest farming, silvopasture, alley cropping, riparian buffers and windbreaks), agroforestry planning principles stretch far beyond – creating food forests, pollinator systems, community orchards, urban design and more. It has almost limitless potential.

Good design begins with better questions. Bugg listed some as follows:

1. What already exists?
2. What ecological processes are occurring?
3. What does the landscape need?
4. What does the community need?
5. What wildlife depends on this place?
6. What opportunities exist?
7. What are the landowner’s goals?
8. How can this landscape serve multiple functions?
9. What will future generations inherit?

From dense towns to conservation forests, rather than seeing land in isolated pieces, agroforestry views the entire picture. It’s all one connected system.

As Bugg noted, “All people who are native to the environment have experimented with agroforestry and been affected by it.”

To understand agroforestry as a living design, she turned to the one‑acre Hausa ecosystem, an Indigenous model from Kenya where every zone has intention, from kitchen gardens and food forests to regeneration belts and even wild bush serving as a living hardware store. In this system, every square foot and every plant has layers of purpose. For example, the iconic baobab tree was as practical as it was symbolic, simultaneously providing shade from the sun during the hottest part of the day while also carrying the concept of family lineage across thousands of years.

Small acreage is often seen as a barrier, but it doesn’t need to be. Even one to five acres can support layered, productive agroforestry systems when designed intentionally. Challenges like limited space, existing structures and upfront costs exist, but strategic design opens the door to highly efficient systems like vertical stacking, modular planning and high‑value crops.

Some common agroforestry practices in the Northeast include growing shiitake mushrooms on hardwood logs in shaded moist woodlots, maple syrup sugaring and cultivating medicinal understory plants like American ginseng, goldenseal and wild leeks.

Agroforestry practices that include livestock include rotationally grazing in thinned woodlands and pastures planted with scattered trees and planting honey locust, willow or mulberry in pastures to provide livestock with forage, micronutrients and relief from summer heat.

Alley cropping involves planting wide rows of cold-hardy fruit and nut trees (apples, pears, hybrid chestnuts or hazels) with annual vegetables or grains grown in the alleys. Issues caused by wind and water can be helped by using deep-rooted tree rows along waterways and flood-prone flatlands to anchor topsoil, planting sidestream filter strips with marketable shrubs like elderberries, Aronia berries or ornamental willows to stabilize banks and filter runoff and planting conifer or shrub rows on field edges to block harsh winter winds to protect livestock or sensitive crops.

Bugg observed, “Many cultures have lived on the land we are now stewarding.” Agroforestry reconnects us to land, lineage and community. A Hausa proverb says, “The land does not belong to man, but man belongs to the land.”

Watch a video about the one-acre Hausa ecosystem here. Explore more agroforestry and forest farming ideas for Upstate New York at catalyzingagroforestry.org, albany.cce.cornell.edu/agriculture/agroforestry and the SUNY Adirondack Agroforestry Plan.

For more information and resources related to small farm agroforestry, contact Bugg at tbugg@vsu.edu or 804.892.2997.

by Joseph Armstrong