Agroforestry Systems for Soil Health Improvement and Maintenance

TLDR

Agroforestry integrates woody perennials with crops or livestock, enhancing resource use efficiency and providing soil fertility, physical, biological, and chemical benefits while boosting biodiversity and reducing erosion. This review evaluates agroforestry’s capacity to improve soil health, microclimate, and productivity in semi‑arid and degraded areas through careful management. The authors synthesize evidence from studies on agroforestry practices in these regions, focusing on management strategies that optimize soil and microclimate outcomes. Evidence shows that agroforestry has strong internal restoration potential, improving soil properties and ecosystem resilience.

Abstract

Agroforestry integrates woody perennials with arable crops, livestock, or fodder in the same piece of land, promoting the more efficient utilization of resources as compared to monocropping via the structural and functional diversification of components. This integration of trees provides various soil-related ecological services such as fertility enhancements and improvements in soil physical, biological, and chemical properties, along with food, wood, and fodder. By providing a particular habitat, refugia for epigenic organisms, microclimate heterogeneity, buffering action, soil moisture, and humidity, agroforestry can enhance biodiversity more than monocropping. Various studies confirmed the internal restoration potential of agroforestry. Agroforestry reduces runoff, intercepts rainfall, and binds soil particles together, helping in erosion control. This trade-off between various non-cash ecological services and crop production is not a serious constraint in the integration of trees on the farmland and also provides other important co-benefits for practitioners. Tree-based systems increase livelihoods, yields, and resilience in agriculture, thereby ensuring nutrition and food security. Agroforestry can be a cost-effective and climate-smart farming practice, which will help to cope with the climate-related extremities of dryland areas cultivated by smallholders through diversifying food, improving and protecting soil, and reducing wind erosion. This review highlighted the role of agroforestry in soil improvements, microclimate amelioration, and improvements in productivity through agroforestry, particularly in semi-arid and degraded areas under careful consideration of management practices.