Agroforestry Community Questions & Answers - Recent questions and answers

Answered: What potential tourism opportunities can different agroforestry systems provide?

Thu, 29 May 2025 09:23:36 +0000

Traditional agroforestry systems such as the montado in Portugal can provide valuable and beautiful landscapes for tourism relating to the natural world, such as hiking, birdwatching and hunting. Many traditional systems also have a historical and cultural value and thus attract tourists, such as parklands or wood pastures in the UK, often associated with historical buildings. There are also crafts-related tourism opportunties associated with the outputs from teh agroforestry - see as an example Wakelyns Agroforestry in the UK (https://wakelyns.co.uk/), where they offer many different craft workshops making use of the various products from the farm. The annual Agroforestry Open weekend started five years ago in the UK, with 6 participating farms, in 2024 it had grown to 50 farms, engaging vistors with farm walks and workshops.

Answered: Agroforestry tends to have higher Land equivalent Ratio (LER). Can you provide the main 5 reasons why?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:15:41 +0000

In complement to the previous answers, it can be noted that agroforestry also has the potential to buffer extreme weather events, thus reducing the risk of crop failure. This is particularly important when considering climate change. Documented examples of this effect include:

- lower frost damage on grapevine in 2017 and 2021 (for 1 cultivar out of 2) in plots with pine trees, compared to nearby pure vineyard plot (Gosme et al 2022)

- better resilience to spring drought of a pea crop under walnut trees (Blanchet et al 2022)

However, this is not always the case (e.g. in 2021, there was more dammage in agroforestry one one of the cultivars, and in 2023, sorghum was not more resistant to spring drought in AF than pure crop, Bachakdjian et al in prep)

Blanchet, Guillaume, Karim Barkaoui, Mattia Bradley, Christian Dupraz, et Marie Gosme. « Interactions between drought and shade on the productivity of winter pea grown in a 25-year-old walnut-based alley cropping system ». JOURNAL OF AGRONOMY AND CROP SCIENCE, octobre 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/jac.12488.

Gosme, Marie, Deslandes Florent, Delmotte, Sacha, Bouisson Yvan, Gary, Christian et al.. Grapevine in agroforestry: impact of evergreen trees on water stress, yield and grape composition. World Congress on Agroforestry, Jul 2022, Québec, Canada. ⟨hal-04754427⟩

Answered: If I establish an agroforestry system, can I be sure to be given the permission of harvesting the wood in the long term?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:58:50 +0000

There are local regulations as explained in the other answers, but there is also the EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation), which forbids to commercialize in Europe products coming from an area that the regultation considers as a "forest" (whether in Europe or elsewhere). Luckily, agroforestry is not forest.... but it might appear as a forest when seen from a satellite! So have a look at question Might moratoria on deforestation prevent me from returning from agroforestry to my current approaches? for more details.

Answered: Is there an optimal sequence of planting when associating trees with perennial crops?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:35:52 +0000

To our knowledge, there is no experimental evidence to answer this question. However, there has been a modelling study aiming at answering this exact question. The results show that the grapevine benefits from the microclimate created by olive trees in “bad” years and this beneficial effect of tree microclimate increases with tree age. Initially, olive trees perform better when planted in existing vineyard but this is reversed when trees get older due to several no-yield years when trees are associated with grapevine. Consequently, over the whole simulation (20 years in this case), the best scenario is olive-grapevine associations planted at the same time. This seems to indicate the olive-grapevine associations could be interesting to stabilize grapevine yield, under the condition that tree management is adapted to reduce the phenomenon of irregularity of production of olive trees. Of course, these simulation results need to be confirmed by field evidence before being used to make recommendation.

ref:

Gosme, Marie, Alexandre Cesari, Louna Gilles, Nicolas Barbault, Isabelle Lecomte, Pierre-Eric Lauri, et Christian Dupraz. « Chronology of Plantation in Perennial Agroforestry Systems : Is It Better to Plant Olive Trees in Vineyards or Grapevine in Olive Orchards? » In EURAF 2024 Abstract Book, édité par Bohdan Lojka (Ed. ) et Šárka Hoffmannová (Ed. ), 285‑86. Brno: Mendel University in Brno, 2024. https://doi.mendelu.cz/pdfs/doi/9900/06/1400.pdf

Answered: Might moratoria on deforestation prevent me from returning from agroforestry to my current approaches?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:25:04 +0000

No in theory (but the difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice). The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) excludes current areas of agriculture and agroforestry. However the EUDR Guidelines place too much faith in the ability of satellite data to distinguish forests from agriculture. The comparison of remotely-sensed mapping of forest with agricultural data in Spain shows that only 20% of the "forest" identified through EU-JRC satellite records is recognised as forest in the Spanish land-use-registry (SIGPAC)... meaning that 80% is wrongly classified as forest and thus would be subject to the EUDR. EURAF is lobbying to make policy-makers aware of the limitation of current definitions of forests (Lawson et al 2024), while the DigitAF project aims at providing more acurate maps of agroforestry, which can then be used to show compliance with the EUDR, since hopefully the Commission Notice on the Guidance Document for Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on Deforestation-Free Products (draft available here) should allow "stakeholders [to] use any maps that they see fit for the purpose of their due diligence exercise or checks".

Lawson, G., Muraru, C., Bertomeu, M., & Corbacho, J. (2024). Defining forests and agroforests in the EU (Version 5). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14161921

Answered: Which would be good characteristics of both crop and tree to be combined in an agroforestry context?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 13:07:55 +0000

The central hypothesis of agroforestry is the complementarity between crops and trees (Cannell 1996). So ideally trees and crops should use ressources at a different times (e.g. winter crops and deciduous trees in temperate regions, another interesting example is Faidherbia albida in the Sahel, a tree that sheds its leaves during the rainy season, allowing full light to reach the crops) or in different locations (e.g. deep-rooted trees with annual crops). So the important characteristics to look at are phenology and morphology, to maximize complementarity.

But other characteristics are also important, such as trees that can be pruned (to reduce light competition when needed, and/or to feed animals), trees that are able to fix nitrogen from the athmosphere, and thus fertilize crops. For crops, the most desirable trait is tolerance to shade (unfortunately, all modern cultivars have been selected for full sun conditions). For both, absence of allepopathic effect seem desirable, however this is not mandatory: walnut -a tree species known to have an allelopathic effect through the production of juglone- are often used in agroforestry.

Cannell, M. G. R., M. Van Noordwijk, et C. K. Ong. 1996. « The Central Agroforestry Hypothesis: The Trees Must Acquire Resources That the Crop Would Not Otherwise Acquire ». Agroforestry Systems 34: 27‑31. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00129630.

Answered: What are the ecosystem benefits of agroforestry systems?

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:48:52 +0000

The benefits of agroforestry are numerous: run-off and soil erosion are reduced; soil ecosystems (microorganisms and macrofauna) and structures are improved, encouraging the availability of water and nutrients; habitats or corridors for the movement of many species (including auxiliary species useful for biological pest control) are provided and products (and thence revenue sources) at farm scale are diversified. In some cases, mixed farming increases overall productivity compared with monocultures because the ecological niches of the different species are complementary.
The 2019 IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land also identified agroforestry as an available potential lever to mitigate and adapt to climate-change.

(From https://www.inrae.fr/en/news/agroforestry-trees-provide-way-forward-sustainable-farming)

Answered: What to do once trees will be harvested?

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 22:56:20 +0000

Whilst the description of the land after harvesting a pure forestry plot that you give is accurate, the land will not be so covered in branches or tracks for a silvo-arable/pastoral system because the density of timber trees will be much lower in these scenarios and will also depend on whether the trees were planted in sequence. When the timber trees complete their rotation and reach their harvest point the farmer will need to decide if they want to continue having an agroforestry system in place in the same plot or move to a different plot and whether leaving the stumps on the ground will interfere with any future activities or not so much (for instance having stumps in a forestry grazing system does not represent any issues). Once the farmer has made their business decision, an expert in the subject can advice in the best course of action.

How do you recommend valuing ecosystem services that cannot be associated with a monetary value?

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 22:56:15 +0000

Answered: When is it better to implement agroforestry as sustainable-agriculture-measure instead of others?

Fri, 19 Jan 2024 22:56:06 +0000

This is a broad question, which I would tackle by looking at timescales. Flower strips and organic farming are interventions that usually lead to results that can be observed within a few seasons. Agroforestry depends on trees, which are slow growing organisms, so the variety of impacts (positive and negative) will play out over the lifetime of the added trees. That is typically measured in rotations, ranging from less than 10 years for energy coppices to over 40 for some high-value timber species.

So, if you are comfortable with longer-term planning, agroforestry is very much for you: depending on where you are (soils, climate, local markets...), and what you're comfortable with, you'll be looking at improvements in biomass productivity (the so-called land equivalency ratio) of anywhere between 10 and 50%.

Answered: What are the currently available digital tools that can be used for AF?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:49:16 +0000

The DigitAF European project is compiling a catalogue of digital tools that are useful for agroforestry. You can find it here: https://digitaf.eu/tools-database/

Is AI already used somewhere in the AF area?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:47:12 +0000

asked by a farmer in the Czech Living Lab

how many trees do we need to plant so that the climate does not worsen

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:45:03 +0000

question asked by a farmer in the Czech Living Lab

When will all these nice digital tools be available?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:43:55 +0000

question asked by a policymaker in the UK Living Lab: We desperately need these tools so the obvious question would be when might there be something available?

How can we map and monitor the number of hectares of agroforestry in The Netherlands?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:41:50 +0000

asked by a policy-maker in the Dutch Living Lab

How do I convince nature organizations and government agencies that AF is good for both nature and agriculture?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:40:19 +0000

question asked by a farmer in the Dutch Living Lab: How do I convince nature organizations and government agencies that AF is a good example that nature and agriculture go very well together, and can even strengthen each other?

How do I best connect my AF system to the environment?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:37:53 +0000

asked by a farmer in the Dutch Living Lab

What are the best species for fodder hedges?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:34:56 +0000

question asked by a farmer in the Dutch Living Lab

how do I keep my rows of trees thistle free ?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:33:08 +0000

asked by a Dutch farmer in the Living Lab

Isn't there a risk in using digital tools for agroforestry?

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:30:29 +0000

Question asked by a farm advisor in the dutch Living Lab: I have a mixed feeling about digitization agroforestry; On the one hand I think/ hope that it can support the movement but on the other hand I feel a personal fundamental resistance to it. That has to do with past experience; Such systems regularly missed the mark. Because of the complexity of agroforestry and multiplicity of systems, I am afraid of this.

Is The carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua) a nitrogen fixing tree?

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 14:57:54 +0000

Despite being a legume tree, there seems to be disputable the nodulation ability that allow to fix atmospheric nitrogen. What scientific evidences are that support the carob tree as a nitrogen fixing tree?

Answered: How can I start a profitable agroforestry farm?

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 13:39:04 +0000

That’s a very valid but also a very difficult question to tackle. While nowadays efforts have been made to develop financial tools and models to predict the profitability of agroforestry, the exact figures that would apply to an individual farm, are almost impossible to predict. The profitability of your agroforestry system depends on a lot of factors, with the availability of a market for the products and/or services you will develop as a very important part of this. In that perspective, you need to know that the profitability could be considered for three main aspects within your AF system: (1) the value that can be derived directly from the tree component (fruit, nuts, wood, etc); (2) the value related to the other agricultural outputs from your system (crop productivity and quality, meat or dairly productivity and quality, etc), and (3) services provided by your AF systems which have a direct value for the farmer or for which someone might be willing to pay (carbon storage, biodiversity, erosion reduction, etc).

What is important to consider, is a.o.:

The timeframe of the agroforestry system, which is typically a long-term investment. Depending on the products you envision, the first products will be ready for harvest after a couple of years (fruits, nuts,…) or it could take over 30-50 years (quality wood).
The availability of financial support (subsidies or other) for the initial investments and/or the maintenance of your AF system
The interaction between the different components of your system and the relative importance of these components for your farm income. For example, at short term notice, the trees might compete with annual crops for space and for resources (water, light, …) in some cases, or they might be mutually reinforcing in other cases (e.g. trees providing shelter for animals – animals providing fertility to the trees).
Not unimportantly but rarely considered in financial exercises: the stability and reliability of the policy context. This relates to support measures for agroforestry but also to rules and regulations potentially impeding planting or harvesting from trees.

PS: it is worth having a look at: The Agroforestry Handbook: agroforestry for the UK (Raskin & Osborn, 2019) – Chapter 6.
PPS: soon, a (Dutch) cost-benefit decision support tool called INTACT will be launched at the Agroforestry Planner Platform. In other countries, however, similar tools do exist. In Germany you have the AgroforstRechner.

Answered: How can i promote crop wild relatives on silvoarable agroforestry systems?

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 13:37:22 +0000

Dear Giotto. Are you thinking about promoting crop wild relatives for specific species? Or rather in general? It might be worth having a look at the work done by Charlotte Watteyn in the context of vanilla agroforestry systems with crop wild relatives in Costa Rica. See . https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1161030123001582. One of the aspects she explored, was the possibility to grow vanilla CWR as a “crop” within existing cocoa plantations, hence developing some kind of agroforestry system. The results were promising and the approach was a good way of creating a buffer system which might be an alternative for (or complementary system to) intensive plantations of domesticated Vanilla on the one hand, without risking overharvesting of CWR in pristine forest on the other hand.

Answered: Can agroforestry work like a shifting cultivation? If so, could you give some examples?

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:03:27 +0000

Yes, it can. Another example is slash and burn cultivation to clear small forest patches and make them suitable for agriculture. This practice has been practiced in northern Fennoscandia for thousands of years, and it is still practiced in for example Koli National Park in eastern Finland as a measure to create a more open forest landscape and show traditional agricultural practices to the public. In ancient times, small forest patches were cleared and the large logs were used to construct houses. The smaller logs and branches were burned to improve soil fertility. These burned areas stayed fertile for one or several decades and were used for cereal (oats, barley, rye, buckwheat) and turnip cultivation. When the soil fertility decreased the areas were used for grazing and this is how the Fennoscandian wood pastures originated. When the sites were abandoned, the forest returns and the cycle could repeat itself. Slash and burn cultivation stopped in the early 1900's when commercial forestry became more common. More info about slash and burn cultivation in Koli National Park: (16) (PDF) Dynamics of nutrients in slash and burn agroforestry in Koli National Park (researchgate.net)

Answered: What type of agroforestry practices would be possible in northern Europe?

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:03:21 +0000

There are many possibilities for agroforestry in northern Europe too. Northern Europe is rich in forest so there would be large opportunities for forest grazing. Livestock produces a lot of greenhouse gas emissions but forests on the other hand store large amounts of carbon. When livestock is grazing in forests, a large part of the emissions from livestock are compensated by uptake of CO2 due to forest growth. In addition, this would be a more efficient form of land use because less area would be needed for pastures. Moreover, forest grazing would enhance animal well-being as animals can graze in a more natural environment.

Also other agroforestry practices would be possible in Northern Europe. Examples are hedgerows, windbreaks and riparian buffer zones. These linear agroforestry systems can have a positive effect as they prevent erosion and run-off which will improve water quality. In addition, it will have a positive effect on biodiversity. Food forests and (urban) forest gardens also would be possible in northern Europe, as well as the cultivation of edible (shiitake and oyster mushrooms) and medicinal (chaga and reishi/lingzhi) mushrooms in forests.

Answered: Is agroforestry always good for biodiversity?

Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:03:19 +0000

Agroforestry is to have indeed a positive effect on overall biodiversity. However, this won't account for every part of the broader concept for biodiversity.

Some species could show some decline in abundance (farmland birds for instance), while others will show a positive trend (isopods for example).

The biodiversity effects of agroforestry are thus depending of the region you implement it in and the species groups you are interested in. It may play a major role as connectivity patches between remnant forest patches.

Answered: Agroforestry tool overview

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 08:11:16 +0000

Yes, there actually is. It's still in a testing phase, but can the overview can be accessed via the DigitAF website here: https://digitaf.eu/tools-database/

Answered: Open Source Agroforestry Tools

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 21:14:32 +0000

Relative few tools and models with a specific focus on agroforestry are open source.

Two specific models that is Open Source are DynACof and the SHAMBA model.

On the tool side, no agroforestry specific open source tools exist. Many use QGIS to plan agroforestry systems and a few farmers to farmOS to manage their farms, though both have a broader focus.

The European digitAF project is working on enabling a more open and collaborative ecosystem for agroforestry tools and models, which also includes the development and transition to more open source tools and models.

Answered: Can implementation of agroforestry systems compensate greenhouse gas emissions from livestock?

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:31:16 +0000

Its all about livestock type (e.g. ruminants or not), feedstock quality and source, tree specie (fast or slow growing), management dynamics and these can differ quite a lot. Can you narrow the question to which livestock type, if you are using external feedstock, tree specie you are aiming?
Crous-Duran 2019 might be an interesting read to start with, that tries to compare carbon balance between arable and an silvoarable. You can see in Fig 4 that AF systems, with slow growing species, only start to be positive after about 50 years, but pasture systems will be different (emissions from tractor operations may be less, but in other hand, if considering ruminants methane emissions need to be considered, or carbon storage in faeces, or shade effect reducing animal stress).

So, I would say from these figures that is very difficult to offset livestock emissions with slow growing trees, considering that to produce 1 Kg of Beef cattle, there are 100 kg of CO2eq emissions (image source). So, better to start planting trees straight away!

Answered: How do I convince a farmer to plant an agroforestry system?

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 11:20:34 +0000

Not sure if you need to "convince" farmers. There is a wide variety of farmers willing to accept trees in their farm, others do not. And there are many circumstances that despite they are willing to engage with trees, there are many reasons that hampers the adoptions (e.g. land tenure - short term contracts).

I agree with francoisw that the best way to "convince" farmers is with making farmers sharing their experiences with peers.
I prefer to see the "convincing" as a "seeding and idea" in farmers's head, let them visit other farmers practicing agroforestry and they will evolve and fruit.

It is a process, and may take time. There are so many interactions of the trees and you can list a lot of pros and cons. In the end is up to each to consider if the cons are really cons or are "just" challenges that are worth the investments on trees (tangible and intangible).

Agroforestry is usually more productive (higher LER), but also requiring more labour, and may not necessarily be more profitable. And when it is, it is still a decision on the "how much more profitable" is worth the change to agroforestry (10-20-30% more?) and the time span envisaged.

It also depends of the definition of "Value" from the farmer. Profitability might not be the most interesting aspect of the agroforestry system.

Answered: How should I prune my trees/shrubs in a multistory agroforestry system?

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 13:26:07 +0000

Either for timber or fruit trees, farmers will not be specialists of trees when they choose to integrate them in their crops. Therefore, pruning will be extensive, and will not necessarily be specific to species (in case of fruit trees), unless farmer has developed own competences.

Answered: Should I plant agroforestry where there is lower or higher depth/quality soil in my farm?

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:37:03 +0000

This depends on the specific context of these areas, like the existing land-use, hydrology, soil type etc. Instead of making it a decision between high or low quality soil, it is generally a good idea to look at the individual area on it's own right to assess if agroforestry is a good fit.

Answered: What are the costs, the benefits and what are the risks of transforming pastures into agroforestry systems?

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:30:51 +0000

I would split this into three different questions to get clear in-depth answers.

Answered: Is there a higher risk of increased weed pressure in alley cropping systems, and if so, how can I best control this?

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 20:42:19 +0000

Probably not: a study in the south of France (PhD thesis of Sebastien Boinot) showed that the weed communities in the understory vegetation strip were quite different from the weed species found in arable alleys, which are more tolerant to disturbances such as plowing. On the contrary, the understory vegetation strip provided a favorable habitat for overwintering of some beneficial insects, including weed seed eaters.

Answered: What is the current extent of Agroforestry in Europe

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 17:07:48 +0000

One study (den Herder et al. 2017 Current extent and stratification of agroforestry in Europe) using data from the LUCAS survey suggests that there is more than 15 million hectares of agroforestry in the EU, or about 52 million hectares if also reindeer husbandry is included.

What are unknown but epic “hidden gem” species for temperate agroforestry systems that one should definitely know of?

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:41:37 +0000

There are so many more species that are currently used in forestry and agriculture. What are relatively unkown but promising species for temperate agroforestry systems?

Answered: How can I design my agroforestry system to get most biodiversity?

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:28:05 +0000

for example to use a polycyclic system of trees species; using a row alternation with a species at rapid growth and another species at slow growth

Answered: What is the best tree density?

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 10:02:43 +0000

There is no generic answer valid for all pedoclimatic conditions and all tree-crop associations. Another important factor to take into account is also your own priorities (tree growth vs crop yield vs other environemental services). Modelling can help virtually testing different tree densities (and spatial design: within-row and inter-row distances) in a given set of conditions to find the best balance between facilitation (what you call the beneficial effects) and competition between trees and crops. For example, a study commissioned by the French water agency showed that increasing the density of trees along the tree line while increasing the distance between tree lines increased crop yield for a given tree density (but decreased tree yield) and at the same time reduced nitrogen leaching (for some but not all sites)

What is the best forage mixture for shaded areas in silvopasture systems?

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 07:52:10 +0000

What are some good share-tolerant tree/shrub species for temperate climate that have good economic return?

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 07:49:14 +0000

What is the financial value of (agroforestry) shade on animals?

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 20:01:01 +0000

I get Agroforestry provides shade for animals which is a high for animal welfare. But how much of this avoided stress is reflected on animal weight gain (thus more profitable)?

Answered: When was the European Agroforestry Federation founded?

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 19:29:30 +0000

EURAF was founded on the 15th December 2011, during the 1st European Agroforestry Conference.