How to Make Agroforestry Accessible
Agroforestry is the integration of trees and farming. The practice is currently regarded as somewhat avant-garde in the United States, and those interested in agroforestry are generally open-minded people with an above-average risk tolerance. Here we’ll look at which of the “Big 5” dimensions of personality seem to define the typical agroforester.
Agroforestry attracts an extremely diverse array of people. All sorts of professions and personality types flock to trees. One course I attended in 2014 included an anesthesiologist, a truck driver, a large number of farmers, a well-to-do couple from Los Angeles, an EMT, a machinist, a professional athlete, and a few agronomists. What did all of these people have in common? My take is that agroforesters are first and foremost very open minded and are attracted by a pragmatic, actionable appeal to nature. Secondarily, they are quick to see nuance, and are less risk averse than others. This archetype is derived from certain characteristics, common to all people, that are well understood and common parlance for those familiar with personality.
Social psychologists evaluate personality with the following five core dimensions: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Openness, and Extroversion. These words form the acronyms “CANOE” or “OCEAN.”
Conscientious people get things done.
Agreeable people don’t like conflict.
Neurotic people worry and stress more than usual.
Open-minded people seek out new things.
Extroverted people like engaging with other people.
The “Big 5” personality traits are normally distributed, in that someone is not: neurotic versus not-neurotic. Rather, we ask how neurotic a person is, or more specifically: if they were in a row of 100 people ranked from least neurotic to most neurotic, where would they stand? Understanding how personality shows up in people is an incredible framework with which to understand those around us. The business world uses the term “organizational behavior” to refer to this endeavor, and it is frankly relieving to ground interpersonal heterogeneity in social science. Understanding personality has helped me understand my own industry.
Syntropic multi-strata agroforestry in curved rows, Brazil
After 12 years of working with trees, reading literature and published research on agroforestry, attending conferences and courses, and running an agroforestry business for eight of those years, an archetypical agroforester has taken shape. Let us walk through the dimensions of personality in the context of trees on farms. Most obvious is that agroforesters are open-minded. Trait openness is expressed through an attraction to newness, philosophy, abstract ideas, vivid emotions, and beauty. Connections between previously disparate things come often to open people. These individuals bridge disciplines and create change. The two aspects of openness are aesthetics and intellect. Intellect does not connote IQ, but rather an interest in abstract ideas: i.e. being an intellectual. Agroforestry is inherently complex and interdisciplinary, and is thus appealing to academics – almost to a fault. Creativity is roughly synonymous with aesthetics, that is: an inclination toward beauty and art. When surveyed, the general population found agroforestry to be more beautiful than plantation forestry, cropland, and natural forest. Agroforestry-associated practices such as Keyline patterning and syntropic farming also evoke potent happiness in creative people, likely due to their aesthetic qualities.
It should be noted that openness is a characteristic of innovators: those early in the technology adoption lifecycle. Agroforestry is currently in the left tail of that curve, at least in the United States, and hence trait openness may be the gateway for trees to become a standard part of farming, through the innovators – more so than it is an immutable characteristic of those partial to agroforestry.
Describing tree huggers as “compassionate” seems reasonable, but at this moment in history, work in agroforestry seems to be split in regard to a correlation with agreeableness. Compassion and politeness are the two sub-dimensions of agreeableness: an interest in agroforestry seems to present a positive correlation with compassion, and seemingly little correlation with politeness. Given that agroforestry yields a great deal of ecological value, I see trees attracting those with a concern for nature and life downstream: compassionate people.
I don’t see any evidence of agroforesters being more polite than the average person. Agroforesters are not wholesale impolite by any means, but pioneers in any industry need to have thick skin in order to challenge the status quo – and with the main objective of farming being food security, any deviation from a corn-optimized paradigm is going to require justification. Nonetheless: for every radical that’s willing to stick it to the man, there are five polite people that value harmony and tolerate incremental change. The radical is often a callous older person who will tell you what they think, and the agreeable person is more restrained and often found working for a non-profit or a government agency.
Long rows of newly-planted chestnuts, Kentucky
Do agroforestry-inclined people plan and do work more than others? Trait conscientiousness consists of the industriousness and orderliness aspects. Industrious people work diligently, and orderly people are averse to aesthetic and logistical chaos: “everything in its place.” Those low in orderliness tend to see the world in shades of grey and are not judgmental of others. I generally see a slight negative correlation between agroforestry and orderliness. Simplicity is conducive to having everything in order, and trees in fields create complexity. When this complexity is managed well, profitability and beauty result – but if a tree-inclusive farm is left in disarray, it takes more than mowing and tillage to restore order. For those high in orderliness, particularly if they are low in openness and compassion and high in neuroticism, trees in fields is sacrilege. I haven’t seen a correlation between agroforestry and industriousness. Any farms with half-managed trees are balanced out by other productive, profitable operations for a seemingly normal distribution.
Linking conscientiousness to extraversion, let me put forward that positivity increases forward momentum. Effective collaboration seems to compensate for moderate disorderliness. A certain amount of collectivism is required to advance agroforestry, given that trees are multi-generational assets and often outlive those that plant them, and interpersonal skills are paramount. There is a literal tension between innovation and tradition, and those that were once pioneers must understand that the traits that originally made them successful might eventually hold them back. Knowledge is only useful if it is disseminated, and we will do well to habitually collaborate in earnest.
Extraversion is the base of positive emotion, and is traditionally associated with our proclivity to be social. Enthusiasm and assertiveness are two aspects that make up extraversion. Enthusiastic people are excitable and talkative, and assertive people are both opinionated and swift to take action. I see no correlation between extraversion and interest in agroforestry, though there is a propensity for outgoing people to enable trees on farms. There are plenty of extraverted tree people that are easy to name, but they are memorable in part because they are extraverted.
Lastly, agroforesters don’t seem to be very neurotic. Trait-neurotic people experience more stress (negative emotion) than others when something does or could go wrong. The two sub-dimensions of neuroticism are withdrawal and volatility. I see a moderate negative correlation between agroforestry and withdrawal. Those low in withdrawal are generally impervious to fear: they can handle uncertainty and complexity really well. Trees take a long time to mature and “bear fruit,” and a lot can happen over a decade. Volatility, the second aspect of neuroticism, also seems to present a negative correlation with agroforestry. Volatile people are irritable and prone to disappointment. Agroforesters seem to take challenges in stride and not sweat the small things. To us, uniqueness and the big picture are far more alluring.
Alley cropping on a conventional dairy farm, Québec
Humans and their personalities are often much harder to understand than trees are. Though the better we understand ourselves and those around us, the more trees we can plant and the more effective stewards we can be. But what will agroforestry be like when it becomes more established? What sort of people will work in agroforestry in the future? One hypothesis I’ve come up with is that we can look to geographies where silvopasture is normalized to answer this question, namely South America. In Argentina, first off there is more agroforestry, and the agroforestry crowd is different. Secondly: decades of trials have reduced operational uncertainty, and the systems look more orderly. And here I see no coincidence. The more we keep our agroforestry systems manageable, and the more we reduce operational risk with good information, the more farms will plant trees. This is to say: plant trees in neat, straight rows, and talk in terms of economic benefit – and we’ll see more diffusion of innovation. The ecological benefit is implicit.