New Hampshire Agroforestry Program Tests Food Forests, Forest Farming and Silvopasture

A University of New Hampshire-led research and education program is testing how agroforestry can expand agricultural production in the heavily forested Northeast. The Adaptive Agroforestry Principles and Teaching program, or ADAPT, includes researchers from UNH, Yale University and Dartmouth College alongside 12 operating farms.

The program focuses on three systems: forest farming, which grows shade-tolerant crops under an existing canopy; food forests, which combine food-producing plants of different heights; and silvopasture, which integrates livestock grazing with trees.

The research is aimed at production as well as resilience

UNH researchers say agroforestry can diversify farm output and income while supporting pollinators and other ecological functions. The trade-off is management complexity, which makes research, extension and farmer education central to the program.

ADAPT is therefore not presenting agroforestry as a universal replacement for conventional crop or pasture systems. Its practical contribution is to test where tree-based production can work economically and agronomically in a region where forest cover shapes the land available to farmers.