Traditional agroforestry systems: a methodological proposal for its analysis, intervention, and development

Abstract

Agroforestry is an interdisciplinary science that allows the sustainable use of the land and promotes a holistic management of its components, such as trees, crops, and animals. In the last 40 years, when merging the producers’ traditional knowledge and the scientific advances on sustainability, these systems have demonstrated to be sustainable. Traditional agroforestry systems (TAS) are contemporary to the discovery of agriculture while agroforestry was established as a science in the second half of the last century. As in any other science, agroforestry research applies the scientific method and for the process of intervention and development of agroforestry systems there are several proposals, for example, one is the Design and Diagnosis (D&D) method. The main objective of this research is to find the method to diagnose of the TAS which allows the necessary intervention for sustainable development. For this purpose, studies were carried out in 12 farming communities located in the Sierra de Huautla, Morelos, Mexico, by using the Theory of Comparative Agriculture described by Cochet, adjusted to the methodology used by Apollin and Eberhart in 1999, for the diagnosis and analysis of production systems in rural areas. As result, the methodology highlights the importance and complexity of TAS and the need to address them with a system approach, as well as the perspective and vision of TAS users in the holistic improvement of their production system.