Agrobiodiversity booms as botanic gardens serve farmers

Advancing agrobiodiversity within smallholder farmer agroforestry systems can help deliver a range of benefits, from diversified incomes and greater productivity to carbon storage and flood management.

The approach is central to Belize’s National Agriculture and Food Policy 2015–2030, National Agroforestry Strategy 2022 and National Landscape Restoration Strategy 2022–2030.

A Darwin Initiative innovation project has strengthened the Belize Botanic Gardens to serve smallholder farmers, building botanical knowledge, developing plant propagation skills, installing agroforestry demonstrator plots and upgrading climate resilience capabilities, promoting uptake via national TV and online.

Participating farmers are being incorporated into a national restoration tracking system for agroforestry and other climate-smart restoration activities to substantiate Belize’s Bonn Challenge of restoring 130,000 hectares of degraded lands by 2030, while also teaching technical experts how to facilitate sustainable smallholder agroforestry systems.