How mixing trees and crops can help both farmers and the climate
Maxwell Ochoo’s first attempt at farming was a dismal failure.
In Ochieng Odiere, a village near the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria, “getting a job is a challenge,” the 34-year-old says. To earn some money and help feed his family, he turned to farming. In 2017, he planted watermelon seeds on his 0.7-hectare plot.
Right when the melons were set to burst from their buds and balloon into juicy orbs, a two-month dry spell hit, and Ochoo’s fledgling watermelons withered. He lost around 70,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $650.
Ochoo blamed the region’s loss of tree cover for the long dry spells that had become more common. Unshielded from the sun, the soil baked, he says.
In 2018, Ochoo and some neighbors decided to plant trees on public lands and small farms. With the help of nonprofit groups, the community planted hundreds of trees, turning some of the barren hillsides green. On his own farm, Ochoo now practices alley cropping, in which he plants millet, onions, sweet potatoes and cassava between rows of fruit and other trees.
The trees provide shade and shelter to the crops, and their deeper root systems help the soil retain moisture. A few times a week in the growing season, Ochoo takes papayas, some as big as his head, to market, bringing home the equivalent of about $25 each time.
And the fallen leaves of the new Calliandra trees provide fodder for Ochoo’s five cows. He also discovered that he could grind up the fernlike leaves as a dietary supplement for the tilapia he grows in a small pond. He now spends less on fish food, and the tilapia grow much faster than his neighbors’ fish, he says.
Today, nearly everything Ochoo’s family eats comes from the farm, with plenty left over to sell at market. “Whether during dry spell or rainy season, my land is not bare,” he says, “there’s something that can sustain the family.”
Ochoo’s tree-filled farm represents what many scientists hope will be farming’s future. The present reality, where fields are often cleared of trees to raise livestock or plant row after row of single crops, called monocultures, is running out of room.
About half of all habitable land on Earth is devoted to growing food. More than 30 percent of forests have been cleared worldwide, and another 20 percent degraded, largely to make room for raising livestock and growing crops. By 2050, to feed a growing population, croplands will have to increase by 26 percent, an area the size of India, researchers estimate.
Humans’ collective hunger drives the twin ecological crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Cutting down trees to make room for crops and livestock releases carbon into the atmosphere and erases the natural habitats that support so many species (SN: 1/30/21, p. 5).
Humankind is in danger of crossing a planetary boundary with unpredictable consequences, says landscape ecologist Tobias Plieninger of Germany’s University of Kassel and University of Göttingen. As land continues to be cleared for agriculture, “there’s high pressure … to shift toward more sustainable land use practices.”
Farmers like Ochoo, who intentionally blend crops, trees and livestock, a practice loosely called agroforestry, offer a more sustainable way forward. Agroforestry may not work in every circumstance, “but it has great potential,” Plieninger says, for working toward food production and conservation goals on the same land.
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