Since 1989, Trees for the Future has been helping communities
around the world plant trees. Through seed distribution, agroforestry
training, and their country programs, they have empowered rural groups
to restore tree cover to their lands. Planting trees protects the environment
and helps to preserve traditional livelihoods and cultures for generations.
Communities around the world, from the drylands of Africa
to the mountains of Central America, report that they are struggling
with the same problems. They have seen that as lands have been deforested,
soil fertility declined rapidly and previously abundant fresh water,
fuelwood, fruits, and animal forage all became scarce.
Agroforestry is a land-use system that integrates agriculture,
trees, people, and animals in the same space, resulting in improved
soil quality, higher yields, and improved standards of living. Agroforestry
has been practiced around the world in varying forms for thousands
of years, and as such it works well with the low-input land-management
systems that are commonplace throughout the developing world. Trees
for the Future’s roles are to train the world’s communities
in advances in agroforestry, and to facilitate the dispersion and promotion
of these strategies.
Agroforestry techniques are tailored to the needs of the
community. In communal forests, tree planting programs focus on large-scale
reforestation and the promotion of non-timber forest products. In agrifultural
fields, fast-growing multipurpose tree species are integrated into
the agricultural system for specific functions such as a windbreak,
firebreak, woodlot, living fence, contour-planting for erosion control,
alley-cropping to improve soil fertility, or other technology - in
order to diversify products from a field and protect the fields from
wind, water, animals, and fire.
Trees for the Future’s work delivers environmentally sustainable
economic development by developing and implementing programs
that are economically beneficial, thereby sustainably improving
living standards for the participants by the careful management,
rather than the exploitation, of their natural resources.
This, they believe, is the only way to save and restore
threatened natural resources: if we cannot develop projects that bring
economic reward there will be few, if any, participants. And, as the
members of these communities have already learned, if economic development
is to be done without the management of these resources, it will soon
fail.
Trees for the Future helps people plant
multi-purpose, fast-growing, ecologically appropriate tree species.
By choosing species tailored to the needs of the communities, they
create agroforestry systems that rebuild worn soils, reduce erosion,
replenish groundwater aquifers and create microclimate conditions that
encourage the return of indigenous species.
Trees for the Future have developed
a long-distance agroforestry training program that is being used to
train community leaders worldwide in sustainable agroforestry practices.
The curriculum covers agroforestry techniques, appropriate species,
nursery management, livestock management, pest control, and more. Successful
completion of an exam is required to graduate.
The forest garden is a multi-layered
agroforestry system that strives to realize the diversity and productivity
of a natural forest with species of plants and animals that are useful
to humans. In many cases, there are spectacular harvests from this
combination of trees and cash crops. Integrating more crops on one
piece of land yields greater total production, reduced incidence of
insects and other pests, increased quality of food produced, and lowered
damage from storms and soil erosion.
In this program, the land is farmed "vertically" instead
of "horizontally." Utilizing the vertical space incorporates
hardwood species for eventual harvest, nitrogen fixing "nurse
crop" trees that continuously fertilize the soil while being
harvested for fuelwood and other products, fruit and nut species, ground
crops, "mini" livestock and poultry projects, root crops,
marketable flowers, medicinal species and a wide variety of other crops.
This comparatively new idea is exciting community leaders
worldwide. It is especially interesting to women's organizations because
small plots of land can produce a cornucopia of goods, meeting the
everyday nutritional needs of their families and offering a myriad
of income-generating opportunities close to home.
To learn more about Trees for the Future and how you can
help visit www.treesftf.org. |
©2010
IOGEAR