Agroforestry: An Avenue for Resilient and Productive Farming through Integrated Crops and Livestock Production

The global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050. With more mouths to feed, achieving zero hunger becomes even more crucial to ensure that everyone has access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Resilient and productive farming practices are crucial in attaining this objective and aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 2. By enhancing food security, promoting sustainability, supporting rural development, adapting to climate change, and conserving biodiversity, resilient and productive farming becomes an essential pathway towards zero hunger, benefiting both present and future generations. Agroforestry is a versatile, resilient farming approach that can be easily adapted to most of the cropping systems worldwide. It involves combining trees, crops, and/or livestock more efficiently and effectively to maximize land utilization and food production with lower environmental impacts and financial costs. This chapter provides an overview of different agroforestry systems suitable for resilient farming. It explores criteria for selecting and managing appropriate plant and animal species in agroforestry systems, highlighting the potential benefits in terms of land utilization and food production while minimizing financial costs and environmental impact. The chapter also explores the role of agroforestry in biodiversity preservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, economic feasibility, and scaling up for resilient and productive farming.