Agro-, Urban and plain-old forestry

[BROWNLOW MARK]

I agree with the general sentiments echoed recently that urban 
forestry should not be combined with agroforestry. However, this is a hard 
argument to justify when the "agroforestry" newsgroup continues to be 
the Wayside Cafe on the forestry information superhighway. Sure, 
there are a couple of regular agroforesters in the corner, but most 
business comes from travellers passing through on to other destinations; 
permaculture, urban forestry, forestry etc. Until this develops into 
a real agroforestry discussion forum, I think it is quite reasonable 
for others to attempt to expand the remit to cover other issues. This 
newsgroup has been going for over 4 years and recent postings 
demonstrate that it has become effectively a "tree" newsgroup. 
Perhaps the time has come to face facts, make the conversion to 
"trees" official, and maybe set up a mailserver discussion group for 
agroforestry? The only alternative I can see is for the agroforesters 
to make a concerted effort to load the newsgroup with genuine 
agroforestry postings. This would need to include regular posting of 
a FAQ and elimination of non-agroforestry mail through firm responses.
Even then, there is still the need for a more general forum to 
lure away those with general tree interests who are not involved enough 
to want to subscribe to the E-mail forestry mailing list(s). Worth 
a try though. Any volunteers willing to rally round the agroforestry flag?

Mark

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Dr. Mark J.C. Brownlow
Inst. f. Agrarokonomik, Universitat f. Bodenkultur
Peter Jordan-Strasse 82, A-1190 Vienna, Austria
E-mail BROWNLOW at EDV1.BOKU.AC.AT.
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