Agroforestry

Agroforestry is one of those vague and nebulous terms which broadly speaking means farming with trees. But, I’ve yet to see a British farm that doesn’t have a tree of some sort in and around the place. So, we focus down in on the two key methods most prevalent in the UK; alley cropping and wood pasture (linked blog). Alley cropping is a way of converting an existing open arable field, into strips, or alleys of cereal crops, cropping the ally bordered by rows of fruit or nut producing trees. These alleys can be adapted to the width of farm...

A topical Friday to be addressing this subject, as the UK melts in it’s third day of baking heat, there is one word to answer why sustainable nut farming matters; resilience. When we speak about sustainability, it’s often in vague terms around notions of nature and harmony, and whilst that has its place, we like to anchor claims in verified data. One of the reasons agroforestry has such potential, is that there’s a base of evidence from Canada and France showing key, tangible results which foster a resilience to the harsh realities of a changing climate. Primary amongst these, at...