For Good Measure: Establishing a Baseline for Agroforestry Projects in Haiti

Summary

Agroforestry is the art and science of growing trees and other crops together in the same unit of land for a range of benefits (Huxley, 1999). These systems represent the most widespread form of small-scale tree planting in the world (Long & Nair, 1999). Addressing existing and expected rates of global population growth and subsequent increases in poverty and hunger will likely require a range of agricultural production methods. Conventional farming methods rely heavily on plant breeding and chemical inputs to achieve high yields of annual crops grown in monocultures (single-crop systems). From a food production standpoint, the problem with these methods is twofold: they rely on increasingly expensive nonrenewable petrochemical resources, and they compromise food security – since monocultures are more susceptible to catastrophic failure.

The goal of this research is to design and test a method for recording and evaluating results of agroforestry projects from multiple viewpoints, including the views of the participating landowners. Anticipated project outputs will consist of: field verified maps of baseline information for the study area(s), maps of Haitian farmers’ desired future conditions for their farms, and a repeatable method for establishing a baseline of existing and desired future conditions from which to measure project success.