UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE
FOREST SERVICE
STATE AND PRIVATE FORESTRY
NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM
The National Agroforestry Center supports the Forest
Service Open Space Conservation Strategy by advancing the science and practices of agroforestry across the United States.
The National Agroforestry Center (NAC) was created in 1990 as a partnership between the Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) with the mission of accelerating the application of agroforestry through a national network of partners.
Agroforestry is the intentional combination of trees and agriculture to provide environmental, social, and economic benefits to landowners, landscapes, and communities. Thirty-three percent of family forest owners also own farms, and their forestland comprises 46 percent of forested acres owned by families. Agroforestry allows landowners to increase conservation benefits and income from a piece of land. NAC is a key way for the Forest Service to work with the agricultural community.
An alley cropping system consisting of cotton planted in the alleys between rows of pine in
Florida. Photo by Shibu Jose.
To encourage agroforestry practices, NAC works in partnership with State and Federal agencies, universities, and others. NAC produces peer-reviewed research on a variety of agroforestry topics including conservation buffers, carbon sequestration, and landscape-scale agroforestry efforts. NAC also produces a variety of publications for natural resource professionals and the public. These include information sheets, Working Trees brochures, technical notes, and newsletters. Additionally, NAC provides training and technical assistance.
Field of melons protected by a windbreak in Iowa. Photo by Richard Straight.
- In FY2011–12, more than $316 million in USDA funds helped landowners across the country install riparian buffers and windbreaks on their land through the Conservation Reserve Program and other USDA programs.
- USDA assisted landowners (both financially and through technical guidance) to establish about
336,000 acres of windbreaks, riparian forest buffers, and alley cropping between FY2008 and FY2012.
- 2,725 farmers reported practicing alley cropping or silvopasture through the 2012 Census of Agriculture.
- USDA supported nearly 100 agroforestry workshops in FY2011–12 and provided agroforestry presentations at nearly 80 conferences and events.
Working Across Boundaries to Sustain Working and Natural Landscapes

The Forest Service has developed a comprehensive Open
Space Conservation Strategy that aims to sustain the environmental, social, and economic benefits of forests and grasslands across the landscape by:
- PROTECTING the most ecologically and socially
important lands;
- CONSERVING working lands as sustainable forests
and grasslands;
- EXPANDING and connecting open spaces in cities,
suburbs, and towns; and
- REDUCING the potential ecological impacts and risks of
development.
After consulting with NRCS, Roy Barnett, a land manager in Alabama, decided to practice silvopasture on his 1,240 acres. Barnett’s pine stand needed to be thinned, and by creating silvopasture he could increase the grazing acreage for his cattle while maintaining tree canopy and timber income. NRCS helped him enroll in its
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to thin the tree stand while leaving the highest quality trees untouched, manage the understory with herbicides and prescribed burns, establish warm-season grasses beneath the trees as cattle forage, and build fences so that cattle could be rotated through a series of paddocks to alternate the times of grazing and rest. After 3 years of working with his consulting forester and NRCS, Barnett has enjoyed great success and has even increased the number of cattle he manages. He is so pleased with silvopasture that he wants to do more.
* Silvopasture combines trees with forage and livestock production.
The trees are managed for high-value sawlogs and, at the same time, provide shade and shelter for livestock and forage.
Visualization of before and ten years after the proposed windbreak is installed, created using Can Vis software. Visualization by Cody
Westlund.
The Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin is located within a patchwork of private, State, tribal, and
Federal lands that include both farms and forests. To improve watershed health, the management entities need to work together. Environmental impacts of agriculture can be mitigated through conservation practices, including agroforestry. To help people learn about new opportunities to create income, protect water quality, and improve options for healthy food, an agroforestry demonstration site was initiated in 2012 on the property of the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center near Ashland, WI, with partners from University of
Wisconsin Extension, the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, and the NAC. When completed, this site will provide an example of a functional conservation windbreak that can produce food, culturally important plants, and other income-generating products along with typical agricultural products. Some plants identified by the Native Foods Project (a partnership of the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission and
Elders of the Northern Ojibwe Nations) will be included in the agroforestry demonstration.
For more information on the Open Space Conservation
Strategy, visit: http://www.fs.fed.us/openspace/
For more information on the USDA National
Agroforestry Center, visit: http://nac.unl.edu/
Cattle grazing in a loblolly pine silvopasture managed by Roy Barnett. Photo by
Richard Straight.
Working Across Boundaries to Sustain Working and Natural Landscapes