Ecosystem services are crucial for agricultural production at various scales. Food production systems are often embedded within landscapes that include mosaics of forests, forest fragments, agroforestry systems and agricultural systems. The spatial configuration of such landscapes influences a range of biophysical processes. Pivotal amongst these are the contributions, often described as ecosystem services, made by forests and trees in landscapes supporting agricultural systems. Ecosystem services are regarded as the structures and functions of terrestrial and marine ecosystems that result in both goods and services that contribute to human wellbeing (Daily 1997; Boyd and Banzhaf 2007; Fisher and Kerry Turner 2008)....

This review will synthesize the scientific knowledge base on forest and tree-based ecosystem services that contribute to crop, livestock and wider food production at the local (farm) level to regional and/or landscape scale (see Table 2). We intend to analyze (both narratively and quantitatively) the available literature on the positive and negative effects of tree cover on productivity of farming systems in terms of crop and livestock yield and natural resource sustainability.

While ecosystems offer important services at the global scale (i.e. carbon sequestration), this is outside the scope of this review. An indicative list of services (shown in Table...

Experts from invited research institutes and universities met at a workshop held in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands, from 29 September to 2 October 2013. The discussions held helped to frame the research question, identify key sources of literature and appropriate experts to advise the review team, and consider the potential outputs of the review and how these might address future decision making in agricultural policies.

Preliminary scoping searches were conducted in November 2013 in Web of Knowledge (WoK), Scopus and CAB Abstracts. Main search terms for the review were established during the framing exercise held in the Netherlands. From this workshop,...