Scaling Up Agroforestry – a Policy Brief

Agroforestry provides means to combat increasingly urgent challenges posed by climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and other global issues. It has the potential to improve ecosystem services, local economies and rural livelihoods (FAO 2013; FAO 2021). At present, agroforestry is gaining more prominence in international policy meetings and several countries have adopted national policy support, strategies or action plans to promote agroforestry adoption (FAO 2020; Lin et al. 2021). However, despite its benefits and recent policy progress, the agroforestry sector remains largely disadvantaged by several barriers which prevent agroforestry from being scaled up efficiently (Agroforestry Network 2018). This brief focuses on the most crucial opportunities, barriers and actions for disseminating agroforestry systems more widely. If the recommended actions are addressed, the expansion of agroforestry for sustainable landscapes and food systems can be accelerated.