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Re: Agroforestry FAQ
There have been a couple of postings regarding an agroforestry FAQ.
I am not sure if a full FAQ exists, but Geoff Lawson has described the
background and basis of the newsgroup in a previous posting and
this can be seen in the Biosci archives:
gopher://gopher.bio.net:70/0R0-3492-/AGROFORESTRY/9411
To this can be added a *rough* description of what agroforestry is all
about (my own perception only), since this seems to be a point of
confusion for a lot of people. The standard definition is:
"Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and
technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos,
etc.) are deliberately used on the same land-management units as
agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial
arrangement or temporal sequence. In agroforestry systems there are
both ecological and economic interactions between the different
components." (See P.K.R.Nair 1993 "An introduction to agroforestry"
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Holland for a discussion)
The idea is to get synergy between the components.
This leads, hopefully, to net improvements in one or more of a range of
characteristics, such as productivity, sustainability, various
non-market and environmental benefits etc. Agroforestry is proving
particularly helpful in developing countries and has now found favour
in industrialised countries, notably New Zealand and the US. As
a science, it is also multi-disciplinary and often involves
practitioner participation in the identification, design and
execution of research activities. The main champion of agroforestry
(to date) has been the International Centre for Research in
Agroforestry (ICRAF), based primarily in Nairobi, Kenya:
E-mail ICRAF@cgnet.com
Those people more interested in basic forestry issues should consult
the excellent metla site list of Internet resources:
http://www.metla.fi/info/Forestry.html
gopher://gopher.metla.fi:70/11/public
For permaculture/sustainable systems interests, there is a good guide
to Internet resources at:
gopher://president.oit.unc.edu:70/00/sunsite.d/sus-ag.d/permaculture/GUIDE
Hope this helps. Shouldn't someone write an FAQ though?
Mark Brownlow
From: BRIAN NORRIS Sent: 09-09-93 14:47
Re: USDA REORGANIZATION
AG SECRETARY PROPOSES TO MERGE NAL WITH NEW RESEARCH AGENCY
The National Agricultural Library (NAL) will be merged into
a new Agricultural Research and Education Service under a
proposed reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) announced by USDA Secretary Mike Espy on September 7,
1993.
Under the plan proposed by Secretary Espy, NAL will join
USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Extension Service
(ES) and Cooperative State Research Service (CSRS) to form the
Agricultural Research and Education Service. With the
reorganization, each of the four current USDA agencies would
cease to exist as separate agencies.
This is among numerous changes to USDA outlined by Secretary
Espy in a September 7 speech before USDA employees in Washington,D.C.
Further details are not available.