Agroforestry as a Strategy for Sustainable Soil Management

Abstract

Soil is the medium through which plant grows and which is derived from disintegration of parent rock materials under joint effect of plants, human and varying climatic regime. The burgeoning population causes serious pressure on land to fulfill the increasing food demand, animal feed, fibre as well as fuel, which leads to adopting practices such as intensive tillage, monoculture, excessive and improper use of inorganic fertilizer, use of agro-chemicals, deforestation, over-grazing, among others. These modern practices of agriculture are considered to be the major unsustainable practices leading to soil health degradation. Some of these practices lead to climate change, which in turn accelerates the rate of soil health degradations. Perennial woody plant based systems has a prime role towards improvement of soil health to sustain production systems. Thus, agroforestry systems is win-a-win strategy which posses various agroforestry systems that are practiced by farmers over the ages and these systems are devoid of intentional intensification of soil for the production of tree in combination with agricultural or forage crops in the same land. This system is distributed and practices most parts of the tropics in the world with varying different models which depends on bio-physical, socio-economic attribute along varying ecological services specific to a particular continent, region, country or community. Organic residues input and its decompositions, nitrogen fixations, nutrient cycling process, carbon sequestration, erosion control and microclimate amelioration etc improve the soil health under agroforestry systems. This paper gives a comprehensive insight on agroforestry importance, history, scope and potential along with its role towards soil health management in the tropics of the world.