In 2014 India became the first country to adopt a national agroforestry policy. The Government of India announced this policy in order to resolve the bottlenecks that had emerged at the interface of existing policies for agriculture, forestry, water and environment, recognizing that land use by its very nature must be integrative. This working paper describes the process that led to the development of the agroforestry policy and analyses it in terms of various types of knowledge and know-how required to facilitate the change. It explains various phases of the policy development process required to bring about a sufficiently broad coalition for change to fully take advantage of the nested-scales nature of agroforestry, from trees, through farms and farmers to landscapes and livelihoods, ultimately culminating in land and agricultural governance and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).