Agroforestry Practice Highlight: Silvopasture

Silvopasture is the practice of deliberately integrating trees and grazing livestock on the same land. This typically involves either taking a stand of trees (such as a forest or an orchard) and integrating livestock, or establishing trees on land where livestock are already grazing. Silvopasture has a wide variety of benefits, such as:

Diversification of Income

Adding livestock to forested areas or orchards can create a source of income as trees mature, or add additional income to existing tree crops. For those already grazing livestock, adding timber, orchard, or forage trees provides more future income than grazing alone. 

Reduction of Inputs

Fertilizer: Animal waste provides nutrients to trees and grass, and trees capture nutrients below the grass rooting zone and return them to the soil when leaves fall and decompose. Nitrogen-fixing trees and forage (plants with root bacteria that extract nitrogen from the air and convert or “fix” it into a form that supports plant growth) can also substantially increase nitrogen. 

Water: Trees can decrease water usage by improving the soil’s water holding capacity and providing shade for grass, thereby extending the forage season.

Labor: Strategic grazing can replace the need for mowing in orchards, reduce potential fuel loads in forests, and be used to help remove invasive species.  

Livestock Health

Shelter provided by trees reduces the amount of energy animals need to maintain core body temperature, resulting in lower feed costs during the cold months. In the summer, shade from trees reduces heat stress, helping animals to maintain their weight, milk production, fertility, and resistance to disease and pathogens.

Browsing on trees, shrubs, and fallen fruit and leaves provides animals with high quality nutrition. Forage in silvopasture systems has been shown to have a better nutritional profile for ruminants than forage grown in open pasture (Pent and Fike, 2014). In addition, trees planted in wet areas can help dry out soil and reduce mud and habitat for insects, further improving livestock health. 

Carbon Sequestration

Pastures with trees sequester five to 10 times as much carbon as those of the same size that are treeless while maintaining or increasing productivity. (Project Drawdown)

More Benefits

Trees and healthy forage grasses help filter nutrients, reduce erosion, and provide habitat for beneficial insects, birds, and small mammals.

Read more about silvopasture here or contact Snohomish Conservation District’s Agroforester, Carrie Brausieck, at cbrausieck@snohomishcd.org.