These challenges were recently addressed by Mbow and colleagues in an article featured in a special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST).

The authors highlighted a number of recognized benefits arising from the use of agroforestry in smallholder systems, such as enhancing soil fertility and improving household resilience through the provision of additional products for sale or home consumption.

Furthermore, with an increasing imperative for smallholder farmers to adapt to and mitigate climate change, agroforestry offers a cost-effective option of doing so. Many studies have shown that agroforestry practices can sequester carbon from the atmosphere and diversify rural livelihoods through the provision of ecological and economic benefits.

However, these benefits are often overshadowed by the challenges of establishing tree-based systems in areas marred by poor land use and lack of governmental oversight: while many smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa practice agroforestry, adoption has not been widespread and this may be attributed to the political and socioeconomic environment, or the farmers’ disposition towards trees on their farms.

These obstacles are compounded by the lack of support for tree-based systems through public policies, and this is something that requires shifts in regional and national-level institutional frameworks.

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