The Edges Matter: Hedgerows Are Bringing Life Back to Farms

The Food and Agriculture Organization and the Slow Food Coffee Coalition are helping coffee farmers in Malawi adopt agroforestry practices by teaching them new techniques, helping them improve coffee quality, and showing them how to attract international markets. This way, the farmers earn more for their products and benefit the environment with their work.

The creation of forest gardens—the modern term for an ancient agroforestry model that mixes shrubs, herbs, vines, fruit and nut trees, and perennial vegetables—are helping supply communities in sub-Saharan Africa with food, medicine, and animal feed. The U.S.-based NGO TREES claims to have created 38,000 active forest gardens in five countries, each comprising about 4,000 trees. This has restored 99,743 acres of degraded land, having reached 56,273 farmers and their families across 174 community projects.

Minnesota-based Tree-Range Farms is teaching farmers to practice regenerative poultry farming. The chickens are raised in two fenced-in plots of land alongside trees and perennial plants, switching locations when the plants in one plot are grazed down. The practice improves soil health and, therefore, water and carbon sequestration.

Communities in Ecuador are building a “bioeconomy” through ecotourism and sustainable agriculture instead of relying on oil extraction. This can help protect the country’s biodiversity and increase locals’ incomes.

Coffee growers in Oaxaca, Mexico, are renovating their plantations into agroforestry systems to adapt to the effects of climate change. The new growing style integrates native trees and shrubs to diversify the fields. This makes the plants more resistant to unpredictable weather, diseases, and pests.

Indigenous seed banks preserve and reintroduce native agricultural varieties, which in some cases are more nutritious than other varieties. Qachuu Aloom runs a one-room seed bank that provides raw materials for its 500 active members, 80% of whom are women, to practice agroecological farming. The Cherokee Nation Seed Bank preserves more than 100 different kinds of seeds, distributing over 10,000 packets to growers in 2019. Several international organizations are working with seed banks to drive more resilient and diversified food production with native varieties as a way to address food insecurity.

In Brazil's Amazon deforestation hotspot BR-163, small farmers and entrepreneurs are working to implement sustainable farming alternatives like agroecology, beekeeping and converting cattle pastures to grow local fruits to create a “bioeconomy,” despite a lack of institutional support.

The Viet Nam Farmers Union rolled out a train-the-trainer program focused on encouraging rice farmers in Vietnam to take up more sustainable practices. This style of training helps farmers overcome any hesitation towards trying new methods by allowing them to learn from their peers and see the success of demonstration plots.

A multi-partner effort in the United States, led by The Nature Conservancy, is helping farmers adopt agroforestry practices by providing funding and training. This style of farming encourages the growing of a variety of plants to enhance biodiversity and capture more carbon dioxide.

Farmers around the world are implementing agroecology practices to make their farms more resilient to climate change while promoting climate justice to strengthen farming communities. Agroecology follows 13 principles that include ecological practices, like using organic fertilizers, and political and social values, like embracing land rights.