Agroforestry and Water Availability
Climate change has been one of the hottest parlances and continues to be had over the past decades. The growing concern is that the increasing global temperature will have a longstanding effect on our agricultural sector, which will cause food and nutrition insecurity. Historically, there has not been a global-level declaration of food insecurity, but we have seen what wars, plagues, and famines in pockets of time and geographical areas around the world have done with regard to the food insecurity they caused. Millions died, empires and nations fell, and progress and development were rolled back by years. The UNDP report (2017) estimates the world’s population to reach 9–9.5 billion by 2050. This would mean that there has to be an increased production of food or that new or alternative food sources are discovered and/or created. This proposed intensification comes with the antecedent knowledge of agriculture already using 70% of the world’s water (UN Environment, 2019) and that there will be an increased water use for agriculture by 19% come 2050. The U.N. Water reports that the food sector contributes an estimated 40% of organic water pollutants in industrialized countries and even higher -54%- in developing countries. The question remains, therefore, how can water be made sustainably available for agricultural production?
One of the growing answers to this question has been Agroforestry. Agroforestry has been earmarked as a way to increase water use efficiency, retain water for crops, and maintain and/or increase water quality. It simply proposes the incorporation of trees, crops, animals, or the combination of it all into conventional farming. But farmers, especially small-scale ones, focus their choice of which agroforestry system to practice based on the market’s orientation to what yields profit. Crops or trees planted primarily as the focus is called Flagship species. Other crops or animals, or trees (called Flotilla species) may be incorporated into this system to provide some secondary services like shading to support the flagship species. The two of the most required needs of flagship species have been light and water- the very water that is now becoming unavailable due to poor land use, increased drylands, runoffs, leaching, and others.
Agroforestry has seen incredible advancement over the years. One of the radical and interesting ideas proposed to aid the water cycle has been the incorporation of aquaculture into agroforestry systems. This essay seeks to explore how such incorporation can combine with flotilla species to retain water and improve its quality, so as to achieve synergy in a way that is sustainable. We propose that with the right combination of the elements of agroforestry, we can avoid the harmful competition for water and maximize the benefits of available water and the capacity of trees to access water from the deep. Trees prevent water runoff and improve soil water retention ability. Agroforestry systems play an important role in nitrogen fixation. Also; old leaves, stems, twigs, and branches fall as litter and decompose to provide more nutrients for plants. Farmers avoid using large amounts of fertilizers, which require high volumes of water in production (an example is the urea industry, which is 45% dependent on water). Water lost through evapotranspiration is regained and re-utilized as rainfall, which will have collection units in the way of aquaculture ponds. This is a crucial role in the water-cycle process, which ensures rainfall patterns are maintained, especially for developing zones that practice rain-fed agriculture (Keys et al. 2016; Debortoli et al. 2017; Spracklen & Garcia-Carreras 2015).
In the end, we agree with the UN Water (2018) that, in the face of increasing global water scarcity, agroforestry is one of the key pillars for resilient and sustainable agriculture. A deeper assessment will be made in follow-up articles to elicit in more detail the “how” of our claim while creating the perfect synergetic agroforestry system.
