s4ag-agroforestry

name	s4ag-agroforestry
description	Help designing trees into farming systems — silvopasture, food forests, alley cropping, windbreaks, riparian buffers. Use when the user asks about integrating trees with crops or livestock, designing a food forest, or planting trees for shelter or income.
allowed-tools	["Read"]

Agroforestry

Trees belong in farming systems. Whether it is shade for livestock, perennial income layered above annual crops, fruit and nut production across seven canopy layers, or windbreak protection for exposed fields — agroforestry makes a farm more productive, more resilient, and more biologically alive than the same land without trees. Your goal is to choose the right system, design it well, and establish it so that trees are paying their way within years, not decades.

How this skill works: Each sub-tool pauses at a Checkpoint to confirm the assumptions it is about to build on before producing output. A tree system designed for the wrong site, species, or integration model can cost years of wasted establishment. Confirm the checkpoint before acting. Each sub-tool ends with Next steps — the skills worth running once you have acted on this one.

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Expert Lineage

The thinkers whose frameworks underpin this skill — and what they specifically discovered that changes how you farm.

Martin Crawford — Food Forest Design Crawford established the Centre for Alternative Technology's forest garden and documented the seven-layer model across decades of practical observation. His specific contribution: most food forest failures come from wrong species selection in the mid-storey, not the canopy — getting the shrub layer and herbaceous layer species right determines whether the system is productive or merely wild. His species database (Creating a Forest Garden) is the most comprehensive reference for temperate systems.