Rainfed agroforestry can play an important role in managing forest fringes while meeting sustainable development goals of poverty reduction, climate action, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management, a study has said.
The Restoration Opportunities Atlas estimates that there is a potential for interventions like agroforestry in 87 million hectares of land-use types, including rainfed and cultivated areas in India.
The efficient convergence of agriculture and forest departments and focus on traditional agroforestry systems are required for India’s National Agroforestry Policy to effectively translate into action.

Come monsoon, Sardara Singh looks forward to planting Melia composita trees (a wild relative of neem) in his seven-acre plot embedded in an agroforestry mosaic in the north-west Indian state of Punjab.

“Of seven acres, I cultivate rice and wheat in two acres depending on the season. In the rest of the non-protected forest mosaic, I grow Melia [trees] and a mix of fruit trees. The Melia trees rise up to 20 feet to 25 feet in height and are low maintenance,” Singh told Mongabay-India. “After six years, the trees are tall enough to be extracted and used for selling and for use as firewood,” he said, adding that this model of agroforestry – growing crops and trees on the same land – has reduced his community’s dependence on the non-protected forest for wood.

Sardara Singh was introduced to this site-specific agroforestry model in 2006 by the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun that has been developing and testing a variety of agroforestry models for rainfed areas in the country – areas where agriculture is reliant on rainfall rather than irrigation. These rainfed areas, according to the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA), are characterised by low agricultural productivity in terms of crop yields as compared to irrigated areas.

With agricultural productivity not meeting the economic requirements, the local communities turn to other resources for livelihood. FRI scientist Manoj Kumar said that in non-protected forest areas in rainfed regions, fuelwood and fodder extraction pressure on forests is a primary concern.

“In rainfed areas, fringe communities rely on forest resources because their dependency on agriculture alone is not able to meet their economic needs. Scanty rainfall and inadequate irrigation facilities fail to support conventional farming practices,” explained Manoj Kumar.

Fringes in rainfed areas may require a combination of natural resource protection and livelihood support systems that are not heavily dependent on water, observed Kumar, adding that rainfed agroforestry can play an important role in managing the forest fringes in the country for meeting sustainable development goals (SDGs).

“Such site-specific agroforestry systems can work towards poverty reduction, hunger alleviation, climate action, biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management that comprise the SDGs,” said Manoj Kumar.

The Food and Agricultural Organisation describes agroforestry as a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape, diversifies and sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels. Reda further from the source: