Trees can be considered as investments made by economic agents to prevent depreciation
of natural assets such as stocks of top soil and water. In agroforestry systems farmers use
trees in this manner by deliberately combining them with agricultural crops on the same unit
of land. Although advocates of agroforestry have asserted that soil conservation is one of its
primary benefits, empirical estimates of these benefits have been lacking due to temporal
and spatial complexity of agroforestry systems and the nonmarket aspect of soil capital …