Chapter 33
Trees, Soils and Food Security
This chapter was previously published in Sanchez, P.A., Buresh, R.J., Leakey, R.R.B., 1997. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series B, 352, 949–961, with permission of The Royal Society
Abstract
Trees have a different impact on soil properties than annual crops, because of their longer residence time, larger biomass accumulation, and longer-lasting, more extensive root systems. In natural forests nutrients are efficiently cycled with very small inputs and outputs from the system. In most agricultural systems the opposite happens. Agroforestry encompasses the continuum between these extremes, and emerging hard data is showing that successful agroforestry systems increase nutrient inputs, enhance ...
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