FarmTree® Tool puts numbers to Agroforestry performance
Agroforestry planners - including farmers - need figures to compare Agroforestry layouts, allocate investments, manage repayments, and report on environmental performance.
Measuring such figures is expensive and cumbersome. Moreover, some Agroforestry benefits take place years after projects close. Therefore Agroforestry promotion is difficult to defend against interventions with short-term benefits.
The FarmTree® Tool is the instrument that provides insight in Agroforestry performance. Simple interfaces allow planners submit a scenario with annual crops and trees, and review costs and benefits.
Our mission is to enable landscape managers to simulate and compare Agroforestry Management Options
Access to the FarmTree Tool allows projecting Agroforestry Species performance
FarmTree database already consists of over 100 agroforestry systems' components (species and inputs). With the FarmTree license you can access a certain number of the agroforestry system component records. The species and inputs can then be mixed and matched and any combinations, by adjusting:
- density and time of species planting
- amounts and timing of input application
- plot management practises (thinning, pruning, irrigation, other costs and inputs, etc.).
The designed systems 'grow' in plots, that can be defined throughmodifying
- soil composition, slope
- climate
- socio-economics such as access to markets
-
farmers' technical capacity
The combination of speices and inputs and a plot definition allows the FarmTree Model to simulate the species performance both as-a-monocrop and mixed-species. Currently monocrop performance projections is used for, for example, to forecast carbon sequestered over time.
