Will vegetable yield increase when planted beside trees?

Abstract

Summary: The author presents findings of the TMPEGS research, the goal of which is to develop economically viable and ecologically-sound vegetable-agroforestry systems to help communities in many forest and vegetable producing watersheds in Southeast Asia which are suffering from poverty, and forest, soil and water resources degradation. Promising results show that in Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines there is vegetable-tree complementarity for certain combinations of plants at certain distances from each other. The author also touches on using vetiver grass to control termites in young cacao trees and using drip irrigation to enhance vegetable-tree complementarity.