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A well designed system should be better than the sum of its parts. That is, combining crops and trees or livestock trees must outperform the same amount of land divided up into separate crop, tree, or livestock operations. Joint production of several components is usually more complex than managing things separately. The extra work must be rewarded by superior total performance of agroforests. This is possible because agroforestry components may be selected and managed to both produce income as well as to help other components also be more productive. In tree-livestock systems, for example, trees provide salable forest products such as timber and pine straw, while livestock control weeds that compete with trees while producing salable meat and fiber (wool). We are trying to emphasize natural win-win relationships among our components.

Livestock grazing in forests is a common practice. In the United States, approximately 1/4 of all forest and woodlands are grazed. Much of this use is designed to harvest forage so that income may be generated. However, livestock offer a powerful tool to promote forest renewal by controlling vegetation that competes with young trees. Livestock are selective feeders and are creatures of habit. Knowledge of their habits and preferences can be used to employ them as tool in forest management. This provides a win-win opportunity to benefit forest regeneration while producing food and fiber through prescription livestock grazing.

Natural resource managers know that stands of perennial vegetation will change over time. Some of this year-to-year change will merely reflect normal climatic differences in weather patterns. Other changes, however, will be longer-term processes that are driving vegetation towards a future state. Our ability to predict this state, to recognize its intermediate stages, and to manipulate it to get what we desire are fundamental to successful land management. This natural, orderly progression over time is called "succession". Since the two processes that drive succession, initial floristics and relay floristics, can't be readily stopped, land managers seek to manipulate them to their advantage. This makes succession the time dimension of vegetation management.