Creating a Demonstration Agroforestry Field

View the project final report

Commodities

• Fruits: berries (other)
• Additional Plants: herbs, ornamentals

Practices

• Crop Production: agroforestry, intercropping
• Education and Training: demonstration, farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research, technical assistance
• Farm Business Management: whole farm planning, budgets/cost and returns, feasibility study
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, habitat enhancement, hedges - woody
• Production Systems: agroecosystems, integrated crop and livestock systems
• Sustainable Communities: public participation, sustainability measures

Many Northeast small-holders struggle with an overabundance of poor, rocky fields. Some can buy better growth places at the bottom of the hill, but those spots are becoming harder to find and still harder to afford as they continue to be built up into apartment complexes and shopping malls. More farmers will be encouraged to grow market vegetables on their rocky hillsides rather than just cutting hay off them year after year-- or putting them into rotations that send too much of their remaining topsoil into the rivers at every spring rain-- if they can visit demonstration plots to see the advantages and techniques needed for use of permanent beds and trees.