"On the detrimental side, trees can be or be seen to be competitive - either economically or biologically or both - with annual-crop production rather than complementary or supplementary. Consequently, when farm size falls below a certain level, farmers may forego tree products and services in favour of staple food-crop production. Or if land tenure is not secure, the time-lag in realizing benefits gained by planting trees may become a severe disadvantage, and trees will not be planted or protected. Sustainability is not common sense if there is no future return to the individual on today's investment in conservation or long-term production. Also, trees hinder mechanization, and their establishment or maintenance may require more manual labour than is easily available.
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Policies promoting agroforestry may demand costs from those who will not receive the benefits. Planning for agroforestry becomes very complex if it takes into consideration the incongruencies that may exist between ecological and economic accounting or if it seeks to resolve the issues of equity that promotion of agroforestry may cause across time and between social sectors or between the individual and the community.
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To maintain the landscape in good health, it is not necessary that every landholding, every stretch of land, contain trees, just as every farmer need not be an agroforester- but it is necessary that there be sufficient trees in the right places, at the least on sloping land and along streams."
(http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80824e/80824E0l.htm)
Some more related articles:
Livelihoods, Forest, and Conservation in Developing Countries: an Overview
Agroforestry and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals
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