The UMaine Agroecology Lab

The nursery capacity research project is based out of the Agroecology Lab at the University of Maine, led by Dr. Rachel Schattman.

USDA National Agroforestry Center

We are collaborating with the USDA National Agroforestry Center on this project. ORISE Fellow Dr. Samantha Bosco will be asking similar questions to federal nurseries.

Qualitative Evaluation of Private Nursery Capacity for Agroforestry in the US

While there are many studies describing the barriers to adoption of agroforestry practices experienced by agricultural producers in the United States, there are no national qualitative studies assessing the production capacity of private nurseries and the challenges that this specific group faces. Up to 20 interviews will be conducted with nursery managers from a wide range of backgrounds in states with the highest number of nurseries. We will ask managers about the specific challenges they face, barriers to scaling up production, and how they are making decisions about species selection. This research will identify critical issues for the industry and help inform the direction of future research into scaling up plant production for agroforestry.

  • We are bearing witness to an era of immense ecological disruption and change. In the coming decades these disruptions will intensify, requiring us to implement transformative climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Agriculture faces a specific challenge: how to make revolutionary changes to the way we grow food while also maintaining a predictable food supply and high levels of crop productivity. Dominant agricultural practices underutilize strategies that could potentially store greater amounts of carbon in soil, improve the health and diversity of ecosystems, and reduce nutrient inputs and outputs.

    Implementing agroforestry practices on productive agricultural landscapes can increase soil organic carbon stock, improve food security and crop yields, create more biodiverse agricultural systems, and mitigate acute effects of climate change such as heat stress, drought, and flooding. As a climate mitigation tool, integrating trees into agricultural landscapes has the potential to store carbon in both plant biomass and soil carbon at greater rates than current climate mitigation strategies such as cover cropping and no-till. In addition to important ecological benefits, agroforestry is able to compete economically with conventional farming when the long-term environmental benefits and the cost of negative externalities associated with agriculture are integrated into economic models of profitability.

    Agroforestry creates a working landscape that provides both economic and environmental benefits to agricultural producers . Similar to ecosystem restoration and reforestation, agroforestry can be implemented on marginal farmland, areas with high co-benefits (such as riparian zones or sensitive ecosystems), and in pastures. Agroforestry has the added benefit of integrating woody, perennial plants into areas of crop production without reducing agricultural productivity.

  • We are collaborating with the National Agroforestry Center, where ORISE fellow Dr. Samantha Bosco is researching the capacity to scale up plant production for agroforestry at the six federal nurseries. Kate MacFarland and Dr. Matt Smith have been integral collaborators in the development of this project, as well.

  • We are randomly choosing nurseries to interview. To do this, I first compiled lists of annual state nursery licenses from the 30 states with the highest number of nurseries (as reported by the NASS Horticultural Survey). Our hope is that a random selection will let us speak to people who are not aware of agroforestry, but may have the capacity to produce high-quality plant material.