Decision support tool visualizes benefits of agroforestry

Agroforestry — the intentional integration of trees and shrubs in agricultural systems — can provide a multitude of environmental benefits. However, few farmers in the Midwest have adopted practices such as planting trees as windbreaks, integrating trees on pastures or growing tree crops intercropped with annual crops. 

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a decision support tool to allow landowners, conservation scientists and policymakers to visualize where agroforestry practices would provide the greatest environmental benefits while also being economically viable, socially acceptable and suited to appropriate environments for agroforestry-relevant trees.  

Using the tool, the researchers found that expanding agroforestry practices across just 5% of suitable Midwestern agricultural land could store 43 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Increasing adoption of these practices has the potential to even outpace carbon sequestration of cover crops, which are estimated to store about 8.4 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year on the same lands.  

Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station | Project supported by Hatch capacity funds. Photo courtesy of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station.