Ohio Agroforestry Summit Helps Ohio Woodland Landowners to Branch Out
On March 7th, 2025, farmers, forest-owners, and friends convened in Wooster, Ohio for the first-ever Ohio Agroforestry Summit. More than 120 people attended the event, an indicator of the growing public interest in agroforestry across the state.
Agroforestry involves practices that combine tree management with other agricultural enterprises on the same piece of land. Summit organizer and Ohio State graduate student Meghan Edwards has been studying the drivers and barriers to using different agroforestry practices as part of a multi-state effort to create agroforestry peer-to-peer networks in the upper Midwest. With support from the USDA and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the project aims to expand use of agroforestry practices and markets by small and medium sized farms in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
“What we found as we tried to roll out the project is that each state was in a different place,” says Edwards. Wisconsin, for example, had well established agroforestry networks and robust communities, but Ohio growers proved harder to track down.
Edwards’s early outreach to farmers found that some Ohio agroforestry practitioners were very well connected and supported by groups like Rural Action, Central State University extension, and The Nature Conservancy (mainly in the southeast), but many more agroforestry farmers were out there who were not yet connected to these organizations.
In response, the OSU team organized a partnership with the Nature Conservancy, Central State University, Rural Action, and the Holden Arboretum to create a summit to assemble Ohio practitioners and support resources in one place.
“The Summit was a huge success,” Edwards says. “We did not know who would show up and were thrilled to have so many attendees which is super exciting. We also did not expect to get so many non-agroforestry practitioners who wanted to learn about these practices. In our follow-up survey, about 30% of respondents said they were aspiring agroforestry practitioners. The practitioners there were excited to see so much interest from others.”
The Summit’s activities began with presentations from three experienced agroforestry practitioners, Cherrie Nolden from Wisconsin, Jono Neiger of Massachusetts, and Steve Gabriel from New York, whom Edwards notes is probably one of the most well-known names in agroforestry. After the keynote speakers, participants split into separate networking sessions based on specific types of agroforestry, including silvopasture, alley cropping, forest farming, and mushroom production.
The afternoon included interactive skill building sessions and in-depth workshops, and concluded with a panel of organizations that offer resources and opportunities for agroforestry practitioners in Ohio. A handful of participants then went on an optional (snowy) tour of Misty Oaks Farm, an area silvopasture operation.
Edwards feels the summit clearly showed the high level of interest in agroforestry in Ohio, but also highlighted the huge diversity of agroforestry practices, farm scales, and existing farmer knowledge levels in the emerging sector. She stressed that the Summit was very much a collaborative effort between all the universities, agencies, and nonprofits involved. She feels Central State University is well positioned to lead the way in agroforestry education and research, but that partnerships will continue to be important.
“Non-profits like the Savanna Institute and Holden Arboretum and Rural Action have really been stepping up and providing support for practitioners,” says Edwards. “I hope that kind of collaboration continues. This is the future, because none of our organizations alone are really set up to serve this whole community.”
“This was a great example of the kind of network building we like to facilitate. We hope it continues and leads to wider adoption of ecologically sound agroforestry and forest farming practices.”
Douglas Jackson-Smith, the OSU project lead and Director of the Agroecosystem Management Program (AMP) at Ohio State, was also pleased with the attendance, collaboration, and excitement around this event.
“One of AMP’s central approaches is to create opportunities to amplify existing resources and programs, to weave them together and share knowledge more widely,” he says. “This was a great example of the kind of network building we like to facilitate. We hope it continues and leads to wider adoption of ecologically sound agroforestry and forest farming practices.”
Next steps include building learning circles or other engagement and learning events. Learning circles will be started with participants at this summit and will focus on alley cropping, food forests, mushroom production, and silvopasture.
Future Agroforestry Summits are also not off the table. In fact, Edwards says she had a call just yesterday asking how to sign up for the next Agroforestry Summit.
