Two major targets of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/) are the attainment of “Zero Hunger” and “Life on Land” by 2030. While “Zero Hunger“ refers to the end of hunger and achievement of food security and improved nutrition through the practice of sustainable agriculture, Life on Land implies the protection, restoration, and promotion of sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, and arresting biodiversity loss. It is recognized that the efforts to attain these targets need to be designed with due consideration of the steady increase in human population on earth on the one hand and the likelihood of escalating adverse effects of climate change in the coming decade already on the other. Pursuing both goals simultaneously is a formidable challenge for agriculture. Farmers are under pressure to produce more and at the same time reduce their impact on the environment. This is an apparent contradiction. In the past, yield increases usually went along with increased burdens on the environment such as higher inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides leading to degradation of soil- and water quality, loss of farmland biodiversity and destruction of (semi-)natural habitats. Based on these experiences, there is a clear trade-off between increased agricultural production and ecosystem integrity. Sustainable Intensification is an approach to overcoming this trade-off by “producing more with less”. This promise of science – that it should be realistically possible to produce more with less – has become a prominent development paradigm and has been enthusiastically embraced by policy makers. Today, Sustainable Intensification is supported and promoted by several national governments and international institutions. A growing body of scientific literature has also become available. Conceptually, Sustainable Intensification is to be reached by maintaining intact agro-ecosystems, fostering ecosystem services, and creating and taking advantages of synergies. Yet, while those concepts are promising and appealing, it is largely unclear how Sustainable Intensification is actually to be achieved on the ground, what the concrete measures are that farmers and administrators can implement now and in the near future to actually increase agricultural production and reduce its environmental burden at the same time. Agroforestry systems are among the few concrete measures that are available and recognized as capable of steering the agricultural sector towards Sustainable Intensification. The declaration that emanated from the 4th World Congress on Agroforestry (Montpellier, France; 20-22 May 2019) attended by 1,300 participants from more than 100 countries stated that “Agroforestry is capable of maintaining or enhancing yields while mitigating carbon emissions, adapting to the increasingly frequent droughts and floods that climate change brings, restoring degraded soils and maximizing the overall productivity of landscapes for humanity and nature alike.” This declaration is in line with the paradigm of Sustainable Intensification. In fact, agroforestry systems have been shown in many situations to achieve higher overall production per area through attainment of higher land-equivalent ratios (LER) and at the same time to generate higher ecosystem services such as soil conservation, reduced nutrient leaching, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity. Thus, agroforestry systems are considered a technique of “Ecological intensification”. So far, agroforestry systems have been viewed primarily as applicable to tropical situations. This situation is changing rapidly. Significant gains have been made in promoting agroforestry in the temperate regions, too, especially during the past two decades. Some questions remain open, however, regarding the potential contribution of modern temperate agroforestry systems to Sustainable Intensification: 1. Even if the total biomass production of agroforestry exceeds that of monocropping, there will still be a reduction of agricultural crop yield. Is this in line with the goals of Sustainable Intensification? 2. Should agroforestry be promoted in all regions and among all farmers, or does it make more sense to differentiate the recommendations according to regions and to farmers? In recent years, several research projects and reports investigated specific aspects of the above mentioned questions in the context of Sustainable Intensification for temperate regions. This paper will review those results and the state-of-the-art regarding the above issues will be summarized.