Integrating agroforestry into productive farm systems

TRUMANSBURG, N.Y. — Water management, conservation and trees do not have to be at odds with farm production.

“As I’ve farmed over the past 20-plus years, when we put our land in permanent pastures it can be beneficial for a lot of reasons,” said Steve Garbriel, an agroforestry consultant and owner of Wellspring Forest Farm in New York.

“Water is valuable and in the next coming decades it’s going to become instrumental in the way our communities survive and thrive,” said Gabriel during a webinar hosted by the Food Animal Concerns Trust.

Water is an asset on the landscape.

“It may not be flowing at the right place or time or it may not be channeled in a way that supports our production aims,” Gabriel said. “All too often that’s because of the ways we’ve treated landscapes in the recent past and the ways our surrounding neighbors treat the landscape.”

For example, Gabriel deals with water issues that flow through his farm, but he can’t fix the entire watershed.

“The choices of our neighbors up the hill have a big effect on what we do, but we still can do quite a bit,” Gabriel said.

“We call ourselves a forest farm because our mission is leave a forest in our footsteps so when we’re long gone that’s what is left behind rather than the abused fields and forest we found ourselves landing in 2010,” he said. “This will be our 12th growing season on this farm.”

Gabriel grows mushrooms as a cash crop, grazes a flock of Katahdin sheep and raises ducks and chickens.

“We also grow and sell trees and teach other folks about working with agroforestry to think about how they can integrate that with productive farm systems,” he said.

Work in riparian areas, the area that is the interface between land and water, is critical, Gabriel said.

“Often we have restricted waterways to a narrow channel and that’s caused a lot of issues,” he said.

The riparian area is not just where the water is.

“It’s the entire ecosystem that includes the water course up to the bankfill zone which is the high water mark,” Gabriel said. “It goes beyond that if we have an overflow into the floodplain.”

The goal of agroforestry, he said, is to seek ways to find synergy.

“We’re looking for solutions where we can find the overlap of what the landscape needs and what the farmer is after,” he said.

The benefits of healthy riparian habitats include trees shading the stream for maintaining good water quality.

“That benefit is not realized unless the trees are close enough to the banks to shade the water,” Gabriel said. “We want woody debris in streams, bank stability and a plan for floods.”

Steams and waterways are living and moving all the time, Gabriel said.

“They are constantly eroding banks, depositing and moving them,” he said. “The meander belt gives a water course space to flow over time.”

Channels of water are very site specific with different types of soil and slope.

“There are so many variables, but a meander belt is about six times the width of the channel,” Gabriel said. “To get the floodplain width, multiply the bankfill depth by two.”

Gabriel is flexible with any paddock located in a floodplain.

“Those are probably going to change over time so we have to be flexible on how grazing happens in those zones,” Gabriel said.

“Unrestricted access for grazing on riparian zones is not a good idea, but flash grazing can be great if you get the animals in for a short duration,” he said.

“But you can’t plan on it because when the conditions are right, the animals might be on the other side of the farm so it may not be practical.”

Last year, Gabriel had drought conditions on his farm.

“That was a great opportunity to put the sheep in areas they hadn’t been in a few years,” he said. “And they likely won’t be in there again for a few years.”

As graziers develop their pasture plan, it is important to remember not all paddocks are equal and they are not always grazed at the same duration and intensity.

“Think about the riparian zones as the icing on the cake,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel spends a lot of time on his farm doing observation, especially during rainy times.

“We want to get a sense of how water is moving to map it out,” he said. “I use Google Earth because it is easy to draw on and it is a basis for us to identify solutions to improve an issue.”

The main focus, Gabriel said, is to increase the water holding capacity of soil.

“No matter where your pastures are — in a floodplain, uplands or tops of slopes, you can increase soil organic matter and water holding capacity and that will only benefit your grazing system,” he said.

There are benefits to multifunctional vegetation, Gabriel said.

“Willow is amazing because it is able to partition nitrogen into a lot of shoot growth and it partitions the phosphorus into root growth,” he said. “There are so many species to work with and they are so easy to start and plant especially in riparian systems.”

Farmers should think about matching vegetation with the areas of the riparian zone since not all plants will thrive on the banks or on the upland.

“Elderberries are one of my top recommendations since they are easy to start from a cutting,” Gabriel said. “We make elderberry juice and we’ve added aronia and black currants which both work well in riparian areas and they create a really nice balance juice.”

Gabriel’s favorite trees are poplars and cottonwoods.

“They are really easy to grow from cuttings and get a patch established,” Gabriel said. “Sycamores are highly adaptive trees and alder and birch trees are some of the oldest deciduous trees.”

“A riparian area is not something you can solve overnight,” he said. “It takes a lot of observation, trial and error.”