Role and focus

FTA’s research on livelihood systems focuses on how to:

•	Manage trees in fields, farms and agricultural landscapes to meet livelihood needs, including deploying appropriate germplasm and managing it to deliver desirable outcomes, which includes developing options that use trees to improve and sustain soil health, restore land and avoid further degradation;
•	Develop markets for agroforestry products so that smallholders capture more value from what they produce;
•	Formulate policies that enable people to benefit from managing tree cover on their farms and collectively in forests; and
•	Bridge the time between investment in trees, and returns from them, using novel public and private financing options.