Land Recovery and Soil Management with Agroforestry Systems

Soils have many ecological functions and provide various ecosystem services including support for global food and fuel production. However, FAO reports indicate that approximately one-third of the planet's arable lands show levels of degradation from processes including soil erosion, low levels of nutrients, acidification, salinization, compaction, sealing, and contamination. These conditions are also found in Brazil where soil degradation is largely caused by inadequate land management. Worldwide, strategic policies have been presented to mitigate this problem, with emphasis on sustainable agriculture. Among them, agroforestry has been identified as a viable system for mitigating and recovering degraded areas. Agroforestry techniques have been developed and tested but are still not understood by farmers, due to their complexity. This study aimed to analyze experiences and studies with agroforestry reported from Australia, some countries in Africa, and Brazil to search for similarities in these complex systems and identify possible correlations to support the hypothesis that land recovery can be enhanced through soil management using agroforestry. A Sankey diagram was developed to illustrate relationships among problems, the adoption of agroforestry and improvements, and the most important contributions. Data analysis shows that the main problems related to soil degradation are soil erosion and decreased soil fertility, while the adoption of agroforestry systems proved to improve different aspects of soil quality and to be a safe path to sustainable agricultural production. To obtain more information on the adoption of these systems in different locations, soils, and climates, it is important to implement policies for reducing land degradation. Furthermore, the assessment of the economic, environmental and social benefits of improving soil fertility and decreasing erosion in agroforestry systems is necessary to validate the use of agroforestry as a sustainable agricultural practice.