E-Books →Living with the Trees of Life, 2nd Edition

With our world torn by climate change, deforestation, land degradation, hunger, malnutrition, poverty, loss of wildlife habitat, zoonotic pandemics, illegal migration and social injustice, this book seeks to find a practical and pragmatic way forwards.
Based on the author's extensive experience of tropical agriculture and forestry around the world, as well as his combination of practical and academic agricultural qualifications, the second edition of Living with the Trees of Life presents a unique and positive perspective on resolving these big global issues. It identifies principles, strategies, techniques, and skills to find a path through the maze of options for sustainable living in the tropics and subtropics.
The book specifically draws heavily on a single case study which involved working to resolve the failure of tropical and subtropical agriculture to feed, sustain and support the needs of rural communities. To address the "big picture" facing society, the work identified the traditionally important indigenous trees of tropical ecosystems - the trees of life - as a missing component of farming systems. These trees are keystones of the natural environment. Their products and critical ecological and social services have been overlooked by modern agriculture and should be recognized as the natural capital of the environment providing the very many day-to-day needs of local people. Many of today's big problems can be traced back to the breakdown of the natural, social and human capital of farming systems. Hence, a focus on restoring the natural capital also has important benefits for the livelihoods of the rural population, as well as for the productivity of the agroecosystem. However, the real potential is to go much further and to build new natural capital in the form of new socially-modified tree crops producing a very wide range of food, medicinal and other non-food products for new local business enterprises. This then restores the degraded social and human capital and starts to create new physical and financial capitals much needed for employment and economic development. There is, however, a missing sixth capital - the political and social will to change the way we manage our world by re-booting tropical agriculture and putting the needs of local people at the forefront of farming systems.