Key messages

• Forests, trees and agroforestry play a key, often undervalued, role to support food security and nutrition (FSN), in its four dimensions (availability, access, utilization and stability).
• Forests, trees and agroforestry provide: (i) diverse and nutritious foods (such as nuts, oils, vegetables – leaves, flowers, roots –, fruits, bushmeat, fish, herbs, saps, mushrooms, tubers and insects), and feed for livestock; (ii) bioenergy for cooking and boiling water; (iii) income and employment (both formal and informal); and (iv) ecosystem services indispensable for agriculture and food production, now and in the future.
• All these contributions need to be better considered by policies aiming at strengthening food security and nutrition, towards SDG2.
• The contributions of forests and trees to FSN allow a broader and richer understanding of the notion of people’s “forest dependence”, with local to national and global dependences.
• Maximizing the contributions of forests, trees and agroforestry to FSN requires policy coherence and integrated landscape approaches.
• Agricultural policies need to better integrate the specificities of tree crops and the multiple benefits provided by the integration of trees in farming systems.

Authors: Gitz, V.; Pingault, N.; Meybeck, A.; Ickowitz, A.; McMullin, S.; Sunderland, T.C.H.; Vinceti, B.; Powell, B.; Termote, C.; Jamnadass, R.; Dawson, I.; Stadlmayr, B.

Subjects: forests, trees, food security, nutrition, agriculture, food production

Publication type: FTA Brief, Publication

Year: 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17528/cifor/008006