Forests and Food Production Systems

Tropical forests have a core regulatory function in global climate systems and provide local ecosystem services. But even if they are conserved, the existing cover of primary or near climax forest systems is unlikely to be sufficient to maintain these functions. Secondary forests now provide at least 70 percent of tropical forest cover and already contribute to these services. But they are usually regarded as degraded, and their potential is ignored. Little attention is given to the nature of the disturbance behind their diverse formations, the forms of regeneration that occur, the ecosystem services that they provide, the governance context within which this takes place, and crucially the contribution that smallholders can make in managing such forests for livelihood benefits including food security.
Current thinking on secondary forest formations draws heavily on normative models of agrarian and forest transitions that are linked to western stages of development. However, the conditions that might have generated such transitions in the past are no longer present. In many parts of Southeast Asia smallholding persists as households are unable to find secure ways to move out of agriculture. In Latin America, as market-drive commodity frontiers push forest boundaries back, diverse secondary forest formations are expanding. The notion of forest and agriculture as separate categories are under question but secondary forests within and outside the forest boundary lie in a liminal zone for foresters and agronomists. Existing conceptual models no longer reflect the facts on the ground and do not account for the diversity of secondary forest types and use what underlies their creation and maintenance within a landscape and the contribution that they make to food systems.
Yet there is potential in smallholder forest land use systems to support forest landscapes, contribute to livelihood security, and expand forest area. Achieving this will not only require a rethinking of existing conceptual models but also a greater focus on the integrity of mosaic landscapes and the people who live in them. Trees in the transition zones between forestry and agriculture may offer greater opportunities for managing biodiversity and securing the future of both rural household livelihoods and the forests at the same time. But the challenges are considerable.
The call for papers under this Research Topic which focuses on the relationship of forest systems to food production, food security, and food system structures invites authors to submit conceptual and empirical articles that respond to this overall framing on the following themes:
• Conceptual framings of forest and agricultural landscapes.
• The shaping of authority and rights in forest and land use practices and the consequences of this for the management of disturbance in forests.
• The links between disturbance regimes in forests and the consequences of these at different scales for the various types of successional forests and the people who use them for their livelihoods.
• Landscape perspectives on ES dynamics in diverse mixed forest and agriculture uses.
• The variation in ES services between different types of secondary forests.
• The role of smallholder action in secondary forest regeneration and forest recovery.
• The contribution of secondary forest management by smallholders to their food systems
• Approaches and methods for studying disturbance regimes and forest regeneration processes.
• Policy and governance frameworks for supporting mosaic landscapes.
• Studies of smallholder livelihoods and food security outcomes in mosaic landscapes.