Strengthening Supply-Demand Systems for Agroforestry and Reforestation: Summary Report

Framing and Purpose

Trees and forests are a vital force in our world. Globally, trees mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon and increasing resilience to extreme weather. On a local level, they support ecosystems and communities. They provide habitat for animals and crops for farms. And they increase soil health and protect water quality. 

Yet we’re losing our forests to deforestation, development, wildfires, and pests, and over the past century, vast swaths of agricultural land have been stripped of trees in exchange for monocultures and short-term productivity models. Reforesting these areas has great potential to help the planet, but in order to plant more trees, stronger supply chains and support systems are needed. Growers, buyers, and planters require dependable, high-quality supply chains, as well as robust technical assistance and funding to better ensure newly planted saplings’ long-term health and survival.

Volgenau Climate Initiative (VCI), the Agroforestry Coalition, and the Arbor Day Foundation co-chaired December’s “Strengthening Supply-Demand Systems for Agroforestry and Reforestation” to focus on these issues. Notably, this “cross-pollination” convening was VCI’s first time bringing together two existing VCI networks to collectively tackle previously identified, shared challenges. Representatives from nonprofits, federal and state agencies, philanthropic networks, and farmer, heirs' property, and Indigenous organizations came together at the Arbor Day Farm’s Lied Lodge in Nebraska City, Nebraska, to form action plans to help scale reforestation and agroforestry across the U.S.

Themes

Throughout the four-day convening, participants connected over the similarities between agroforestry and reforestation efforts  while identifying the distinct qualities and experiences of each sector. At one point, the group united over their common goal: to plant more trees. Though for different reasons and in different places, the objective is the same. 

Participants also recognized the following key themes:

• Increase high-quality seed supply: High-quality seeds are integral to expanded tree-planting operations. During the convening, participants rallied behind the cross-sector potential to create widely recognized certification standards for source-identified seed and plant materials. This particular collaboration between reforestation and agroforestry highlighted a leverage point that can strengthen both sectors. Aligning now can prevent “dueling systems” and “strengthen both efforts over time,” a host committee member reflected after the convening. 

• Recognize the power of youth: “I’m not sure we can have this conversation [about long-term sustainable change] in a durable way without youth,” one participant stated. Early in the convening, participants named how narratives can shape young people’s relationship with nature. Such education, through stories and experience, can drive their engagement to protect the natural world or disregard it. Fostering that relationship at a young age can support stewardship of trees into future generations and help increase workforce capacity in the upcoming years and beyond.

• Exchange knowledge: Part of the impetus for this convening was the potential to share resources and information across different but complementary sectors. Participants sought to find commonalities in the ways agroforestry and reforestation use similar facilities but with different materials. Within the supply chain, participants discussed sharing western U.S. seed sourcing strategies with the East, creating propagation protocols across nurseries, and leveraging agroforestry demands to help provide a market for forestry nurseries. However, participants noted that facilitating knowledge exchange between nurseries and businesses would need to respect competitive privacy. 

• Grow at an appropriate scale: There was much debate over the best approach to scale work without losing diversity, recreating conventional models, or generating redundancies. One viewpoint highlighted the strategy of “building that connective tissue” between locally-led operations, and another supported the need for creating cohesion at a larger scale to get a clear picture first. During action planning, two groups worked simultaneously  on creating seed standards and decentralized operations, ultimately deciding that the standards should happen first, and the locally-led operations would follow.

• Identify allies: In response to uncertainty at the federal level and the potential to create new and broad coalitions, the participants sought to use their networks to identify allies. One participant brought in the potential for botanical gardens to help collect and certify seeds. Other groups looked to work with academia, but maintain leadership outside of those institutions. Some participants also pinpointed the need to “develop practices outside the box” of government frameworks by partnering with private companies. And others sought to work at the state level with the right “entrepreneurial” employees who could help spearhead change.