Nestled in the verdant hills of western North Carolina, Wild East Farm feels like a stage set for a carefully choreographed dance. Sheep graze on pasture grass in the emerging shade of young fruit trees, with apples, Asian pears, persimmons, pawpaws, and mulberries evenly interspersed with hazelnut shrubs. Chickens follow close behind the sheep as they rotate daily across the pasture, adding fertility to the soil as they move, accompanied by portable shelters. In adjacent fields, you might find turkeys strutting among rows of pecan, black walnut, and hickory trees, or gobbling away between lanes of blueberries. Elsewhere on the farm, pigs root beneath the canopy of an abandoned pine plantation, clearing away the dense undergrowth of invasive plants.

As the animals move with the days and seasons across Wild East Farm’s 12 acres of former cattle pasture, they are transforming the land into something new. The system that farmers Noah and Lyric East are using here is called silvopasture, a type of agroforestry that intentionally integrates trees, animals, and pasture into a single functioning system. Silvopasture requires intensive management and careful observation of the farm’s ecology. But for creative and enterprising farmers, it can offer innumerable benefits to both the farm’s bottom line and the health and resilience of the land.

Cows in the woods? There’s more to it.

Indigenous peoples of North America and around the world have practiced various forms of silvopasture for millennia. Silvopasture is more than just turning livestock loose in the woods. Rather, it involves managing trees, animals, and forage plants together in a way that is mutually beneficial, such that the whole system becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

The National Agroforestry Center describes the “Four I’s” of silvopasture: livestock and forage are intentionally combined with complementary trees and/or shrubs and managed through intensive practices such as tree maintenance and rotational grazing. These practices aim to maximize positive interactions among the tree, pasture, and animal components, which together generate harvestable products and conservation benefits as an integrated system.

What do these beneficial interactions look like? Livestock manure fertilizes both trees and forage. In turn, the trees provide shade and shelter, stabilizing microclimates and reducing animal stress during the extreme heat of summer and cold winds of winter. Some trees supplement the animals’ diets with fallen fruits and nuts, while others can be coppiced, or cut back periodically to provide branches for animal fodder. Their shade can even reduce lignin content in the underlying grasses, improving digestibility.

Trees also benefit the pasture itself. Shade reduces soil moisture loss due to heat and drought. Deep-rooted trees may also benefit the pasture by drawing up nutrients from deeper in the soil and cycling them back into the system.

A mature silvopasture mimics a savanna ecosystem, with trees thinly spaced over a grassland to create a park-like landscape. This creates habitat corridors for wildlife like wild turkeys, quail, and grouse. The trees also help prevent soil erosion and sequester carbon from the atmosphere, making silvopasture a powerful tool to mitigate climate change.

Trees + Animals = Profit

Farmers can take advantage of countless possible combinations of animals and trees to generate stable and diversified income streams. With creativity and careful planning, silvopasture systems can be adapted to fit farm operations of any scale.

John Fike, an associate professor and State Forage Specialist at Virginia Tech, conducts research on silvopasture systems and advises silvopasture adoptees through Virginia Cooperative Extension. He explains that many of the silvopasture systems originally proposed in the Southeast 30 to 40 years ago were squarely rooted in the traditional industrial timber production model, typically on pine plantations. But with changing timber and pulp markets and challenges of scale, growing trees for timber may not always be the best option, especially for farmers with limited acreage.

“The more recent definitions of silvopasture have created more space for alternative products and alternative purposes for the trees in the system,” says Fike. “The people that make these systems work economically are the people who are willing to think outside the box and figure out other ways to utilize tree products and services.” He encourages farmers to think beyond a monoculture of timber trees to create a greater diversity of opportunities.

That might mean planting fruit and nut trees for direct sales or U-pick opportunities, as Wild East Farm has done. Farmers could also utilize tree species like black locust to harvest rot-resistant fence posts. In some regions, farmers can set up maple syrup production or cut logs for mushroom cultivation. They can plant native species, like mulberries, to attract wildlife like deer and game birds, and then generate income by leasing out hunting rights. If they can verify carbon sequestration in their trees and soil, they can even earn money by selling carbon credits through offset markets.

Beyond direct income, silvopasture also adds long-term value to the land. “The trees also add to the value of the property and to the quality of life on the farm, adding aesthetic value and also acting as a buffer to increase resilience to increasing weather extremes,” says Fike. “Harvesting the trees is not essential for you to realize their value.”

Farmer Wyn Miller harnessed her professional background in landscape architecture to establish a diverse silvopasture on her family’s fifth-generation cattle farm in Jefferson County, Tennessee. She has planted hundreds of hardwood and softwood trees across Lick Skillet Farm’s 1,000 acres, originally with the goal of more evenly dispersing shade among the rotationally grazed pastures. But beyond that, she also feels driven by a long-term vision for the landscape she wants to see.

“Something to consider when thinking about trees is that they can offer a type of value that other farm improvements can’t, because of their intergenerational nature. Trees create a legacy for family members or future landowners,” says Miller. “Planting hardwood trees is akin to putting land in a land trust — you’re showing priorities for any future family or farming operation. That can mean a lot to people — it shows that I believe in the future of this place.”

To Plant or Not to Plant?

There are two main pathways for creating a silvopasture system: addition, or planting new trees on existing pasture, and subtraction, or thinning trees from an existing woodland.

Many farmers first approach silvopasture with a preference for the thinning method, according to Stesha Warren, president of the Association for Temperate Agroforestry. “Here in Central Appalachia and the Southeast, farmers often have that back 40 that they’re just getting firewood off of. They may hunt it occasionally, or lease it out for recreational use, but for the most part, it just sits there,” she says.

Farmers see thinning out these woodlots for silvopasture as an opportunity to expand their land base and utilize their full acreage for production. Thinning also has the advantage of providing immediate shade and shelter from mature trees, whereas newly planted trees will take several years to start manifesting these benefits.

However, upfront costs of subtraction can run high due to the need for heavy equipment to cut down trees and remove stumps. It also requires careful planning to achieve the correct light percentage, establish adequate forage, and prevent machines and livestock from damaging tree roots and compacting the soil. If not done properly according to sound forest management principles, this method can be highly damaging to the remaining forest — so much so that most states don’t allow subtraction silvopasture to qualify for NRCS funding due to the risk of ecological damage.

But if done well, it can also have ecological benefits. Animals can help clear out invasive plants like autumn olive, multiflora rose, or oriental bittersweet, opening space for a greater diversity of native birds, pollinators, and understory plants. Warren emphasizes the need for better education for both producers and farm service providers on how to responsibly thin a woodland to create a healthy, living silvopasture system.

Planting silvopasture, on the other hand, comes with its own set of demands and opportunities. Though it takes longer to establish and begin yielding significant benefits, planting new trees often costs less up front and allows for a much greater degree of customization. Farmers have more freedom to choose tree species and spatial configurations that align with their goals.

Planting trees involves more than just digging holes and plopping seedlings into the ground. Finding the right seedlings can take time, especially if you are looking for certain specialty tree crops or locally adapted ecotypes. Proper preparation of the soil before planting and ongoing care and maintenance will set the young trees up for success. Trees also require protection from livestock and deer. Newer innovations such as vented tree tubes, fiberglass stakes, and electrified polywire fencing, like the system Wyn Miller employs, can help optimize conditions for the sapling without excluding livestock from the pasture.

At Wild East Farm, Noah East uses both approaches. His experience reflects the pros and cons of each: “The tradeoff is that it is cheaper and easier to plant a lot of trees than to turn a forest into a silvopasture, but with the forest you already have big trees, diverse fodder, and shade,” he says.

To balance these tradeoffs, East emphasizes the need to build in diverse income streams and to plan over multiple time scales. Wild East Farm’s annual vegetable plots and broiler chickens formed the farm’s economic foundation in its first few years, generating quick cash flow and a strong return on investment. Now in their fourth season, the fruit trees and blueberries will generate income through U-pick opportunities in the near term, while East sees the nut trees as more of a long-term legacy planting. Meanwhile, in the pine stand, the Easts have secured NRCS funding to thin out the dense canopy. Their forest-raised pigs clear out poison ivy and invasives and provide enough disturbance to prepare the soil for planting pasture grasses. However, due to the prohibitive cost of grinding down the stumps to create an ideal pasture surface, East sees the process of converting the woodland to silvopasture as an ongoing project that he sees no need to rush.

Designing Your System

Ask any silvopasture practitioner, and you’ll hear the same refrain: there is no one right way to do it.

“Lots of people get this paralysis about what if they plant the wrong trees. But every farmer needs to make decisions for themselves about what their goals and needs are and put that at the forefront of the design process,” says East, who also runs a consulting service for ecological farm design. “Ask yourself the questions, ‘What does this land need? What kinds of yields and ecology do you want? What does the market look like in your locality?’

“But just as important is, ‘what are your interests and skills? What do you enjoy picking and eating?’”

Understanding the land is the first step. East recommends looking at contour maps, preferably with contours at three-foot intervals or lower, to understand the distribution of water and light across the farm. Next, you can use online tools like the National Agroforestry Center’s tool library to identify tree species that would thrive on your land, and Google Earth to start calculating your tree spacing and sketching out a design. It’s imperative to go out in the field to ground-truth your design, to account for any anomalies that maps and models can’t capture. From there, consider your time constraints and the kinds of tools you have available to you to begin implementation.

In addition to her work at Lick Skillet Farm, Wyn Miller provides agroforestry technical assistance through Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD). She stresses that it’s important to be realistic, and to remember that a system that works well in one place may not work well in another. “People get very excited about things they see online or in a book, so it can be easy to bite off more than you can chew,” she says. Miller recommends starting off with maybe 100 trees of three or four different species, including a mix of hardwoods and softwoods with a range of growth rates. “It takes a lot of work to manage a certain number of trees, so be patient, start off small, and learn as you go.”

Setting Up for Success

Especially in the South, farmers exploring silvopasture for the first time may feel like they’re braving uncharted waters. Fortunately, it’s not a journey they have to travel alone.

Agencies like NRCS, state extension services, soil and water conservation districts, and various nonprofit organizations can help farmers access resources, information, and funding for silvopasture adoption. Silvopasture is covered under NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) in certain states, and farmers can also access funds through the Catalyzing Agroforestry Grant Program and Working Trees’ ASSETS grant.

Many funding programs also come with access to technical assistance. TA providers can provide critical guidance during the development process and help identify any constraints you might have missed. John Fike recommends seeking diverse perspectives from advisors with different areas of expertise, including forestry, forage science, and local agricultural markets. “Having a team working together to help to get it right on the front end can minimize mistakes and improve outcomes,” he writes.

As silvopasture and other agroforestry practices grow in popularity, demand often outpaces the availability of resources. Stesha Warren, who formerly worked as an Agroforestry Technical Trainer for Appalachian Sustainable Development, recalls a survey conducted by ASD that found that 80% of surveyed producers expressed interest in silvopasture. However, the majority cited lack of access to technical assistance and demonstrations as their top barrier to adoption. ASD’s Agroforestry Trainings for Natural Resource Professionals provides education on silvopasture and other agroforestry practices to professional service providers and farmer mentors. The project aims to expand capacity for agroforestry technical assistance for farmers across the region.

For farmers who would like to see more resources for silvopasture in their area, Warren encourages making a visit to the local county ag building or USDA Service Center. “Let those people know that you want to see more support in agroforestry practices and silvopasture,” she says. “Getting that information to the state level starts with producers talking with their local agents, and producer demand is what drives that federal funding.”

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Kara Hoving is a writer and policy advocate specializing in sustainable food systems and climate change communication. She helps nonprofits tell solutions-based stories that build momentum for positive change.