Agroforestry for Sustainable Development: Assessing Frameworks to Drive Agricultural Sector Growth

Agroforestry is widely promoted to mitigate climate change and strengthen agricultural systems; this study thus evaluates various agroforestry systems practiced in South Asian countries based on the sustainability parameters for the agriculture sector. A hierarchical model for sustainable development in agriculture is formulated considering four criteria, twenty sub-criteria, and seven alternatives. Four pillars of sustainability, namely economic, environmental, social, and human, have been considered as the criteria in this study. The proposed model is evaluated using the multi-criterion decision-making technique fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP). The investigation of the results shows that environmental and economic criterion holds the utmost value implying the need to consider both ecology and economy while formulating a sustainable system. Among the sub-criteria, farm income, timber produce, watershed protection, and carbon sequestration obtained the highest weightage. Alley cropping system and silvopastoral system have been identified to be the most sustainable agroforestry system among the considered alternatives; as they are found to possess immense potential to boost farm income and transform the animal husbandry sector, respectively. The findings of this study will assist stakeholders such as farmers and policymakers at various levels of decision-making to formulate policies regarding the adoption, development, and promotion of agroforestry interventions. The outcomes of this study will also assist researchers working in the domain of agricultural sustainability in devising a system that is sustainable, taking into account the key attributes identified in this study.