Agroforestry today: an analysis of the 750 presentations to the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry, 2004

The developmental stage of a discipline can be gauged by the nature of its publications. Major themes of the 750 presentations at the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry, Orlando, Florida, 2004, were biological and ecological (28%); communication and knowledge integration (24%); and economics, marketing, and social issues (23%). The presentations related mostly (88% of total) to the tropics. About 55% of the authors came from educational institutions, 21% represented governments, and 13% represented nongovernmental organizations. The presentations showed that sustainability continued to be a major conceptual foundation of agroforestry, but there was considerable tropical-temperate contrast in efforts to attain sustainability. Although issues such as poverty alleviation, food security, and attainment of the Millennium Development Goals dominate the research and development agenda in the tropics, the focus in the temperate region is on environmental services such as carbon sequestration, water quality enhancement, and biodiversity conservation. The nature, diversity, and distribution of presentations as well as the current trends in agroforestry research suggest that agroforestry is maturing as a robust discipline.