The Contribution of Agroforestry to Sustainable Development Goal 2: End Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improved Nutrition, and Promote Sustainable Agriculture

Worldwide there are over 1000 million hectares of agroforestry systems (AFS). The most frequent are shaded annual and perennial crops, silvopastoral systems, live fences, and windbreaks. Many Indigenous and local communities still utilize AFS to promote agroecosystem sustainability, using techniques such as residue management and ash deposition, enhancement of nutrient recycling and conservation, and high species diversity maintenance. However, these communities often remain marginalized, and poverty and resource degradation prevail. Many international entities, nonprofit organizations, and others are conducting research for enhanced development with AFS. Their work is geared toward decreasing rural poverty and hunger while maintaining landscape integrity and ecosystem services. Several of these programs and projects work to attain the goals and targets set as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDG 2, which focuses on decreasing hunger and malnutrition. Most of these efforts seek to integrate the traditional knowledge of smallholders with scientific knowledge on environmental and agricultural strategies. With this combined understanding, groups can promote the most suitable systems for varied contexts. This chapter focuses on AFS projects geared to contribute to SDGs, illustrating practical solutions and remaining challenges. Significant advances have been made with regard to selecting the most appropriate types of AFS products and markets. This has increased smallholders’ access to markets for trees and other AFS products, allowing those who are socially or economically marginalized to capitalize on the value inherent in these systems. Important challenges and possibilities remain as stakeholders attempt to ascertain how AFS can scale outward and reach larger scales.