Alley farming

Alley farming involves the cultivation of food crops among hedgerows of multipurpose trees. Use of woody legumes provides N-rich mulch and green manure to maintain soil fertility and enhance crop production, and protein-rich fodder for livestock. The success of alley farming depends on a number of technical factors—choice of suitable woody species, successful establishment of the hedgerows, and appropriate management of the hedgerows. The alley farming technique being a scale-neutral system is flexible enough for use both by smallholder farmers and in mechanized farming. It has the potential for providing the linkage between the extensive traditional farming practice and intensive farming. Alley farming allows for longer cropping period with increased land use intensity, rapid and effective soil fertility regeneration by inclusion of selective MPTs, and more intensive cropping with reduced requirements for external inputs.