This Paradigm Shift Film features some of Sweden and England’s agroforestry pioneers explaining how we can play a key role in restoring ecosystems through our food production…
Martin Crawford, Director of the Agroforestry Research Trust in the UK, focuses on agroforestry as a perennial intercropping system, equipping us with more food security and resilience to increasing weather extremes. He stresses the need to move from annual crops to perennial crops and become carbon negative through incorporating trees and shrubs in growing systems, showing some crops that can be grown in forest gardens. Professor Martin Wolfe, founder of Wakelyns Agroforestry Farm, Suffolk, highlights the many benefits of diversity and touches on tree management by coppicing and pollarding and calculating the performance of crops grown in alleys compared to crops grown in a large field or plantation using the Land Equivalent Ratio. The various cropping systems at Wakelyns are sequestering carbon, promoting cycling of nutrients and water, providing a haven of biodiversity, and helping reduce problems with pests and diseases.
Johanna Björklund from Örebro University, Sweden, explains the different kinds of agroforestry systems and the need for agroforestry; increased efficiency, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and recycling phosphorous, nitrogen and other nutrients between plants and animals. She suggests some actions needed to increase food security and the use of agroforestry in the future, and what you could do if you were wanting to establish an agroforestry system. Philipp Weiss, Stjärnsund, Sweden, explains the principles of the forest garden, what we can learn from it and the deciduous forest, and how a forest garden can be built into an already established woodland. He explains that Bagarmossen Forest Garden, Stockholm is creating and maintaining its own fertility. He also explains the concepts and principles of permaculture and what it can offer as a way of helping to meet some of the global challenges, equipping people at the local community level.
There is evidence to suggest that applying uncomposted (ramial) woodchip at an appropriate phase in a crop rotation can increase soil organic matter, water holding capacity, and the nutrient levels of soils.
The WOOdchip for Fertile Soils (WOOFS) project was a European Innovation Partnership (EIP) Project part funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. It was led by the Organic Research Centre (ORC) with Wakelyns Agroforestry, Iain Tolhurst (Tolhurst Organic CiC), Ben Raskin (Soil Association), Christine Watson (SRUC), William Hamer (Forestry Consultant), Robert Benford (Down Farm), and Nigel Stimson (Tree Shear Services). It trialled adding uncomposted versus composted woodchip from on-farm woody resources as a soil improver. By linking management of farm hedges and trees with the improvement of soils for agricultural production and providing an additional economic incentive for management of hedges and on-farm woody resources, it aimed to increase the sustainability of the system as a whole.
The project hub page held on the Agricology website hosts some project outputs that can be found on the ORC’s project page alongside other particularly relevant content for farmers, including a presentation, bulletin article, webinar recordings and event footage.
FABulous Farmers is a European project designed to support farmers in the transition to more agroecological practices on their farms. The project aims to reduce the reliance on external inputs such as chemical fertilisers and pesticides, by encouraging the use of methods and interventions that increase the farm’s Functional AgroBiodiversity (FAB). These are targeted measures of biodiversity in and around the field to improve pollination, pest management, soil and water quality on the farmland. The project assists farmers in identifying and adopting relevant FAB-methods specifically for their farm. Networking sessions are organised in which the farmers can exchange ideas and experiences. Demonstration fields show effects of particular FAB-measures. The effect of some FAB-measures taken on the farm can be improved further by similar actions in the surrounding area. There are 14 active pilot areas in 6 countries (BE, NL, LUX, FR, UK and DE) in which they co-operate with other stakeholders, e.g. landowners and municipalities, to come to an integrated FAB-landscape-integration plan. Results of the trial fields and on farms overall will be communicated to European and regional policy makers.
From the website information can be accessed on agroforestry establishment, management, benefits and legal aspects.
This website provides information on agroforestry screening, mapping, environmental benefits on a regional scale, case study projects, and information on, and links to, farm management analytics software and design software for advisors.
Regen Farmer was founded by a serial tech entrepreneur and agroforestry designer and software engineer with wide experience from environmental modelling, GIS based web development and machine learning. It is focused on accelerating the adoption of regenerative land use practices, with a goal of supporting farmers, communities, governments and organisations to transition 5 million hectares of agricultural land to regenerative agroforestry by 2025 by enabling farmers to adopt and maintain regenerative agroforestry on a global scale. The aim is to achieve this by:
– Providing agroforestry project development solutions for farmers and agricultural advisors to make agroforestry more attractive for landowners.
– Developing management and monitoring software to ensure that farmers continue to practice regenerative agroforestry through continuous regenerative management support.
Wakelyns Agroforestry in Suffolk practices organic farming on one of the longest established and most diverse agroforestry sites in the UK. Different agroforestry systems, based on a maximum use of biodiversity, have been the site of many years of research trials and demonstrations. This 22.5 hectare / 56 acre experimental and innovative agroforestry farm was established by the late plant pathologist and pioneer Professor Martin Wolfe, to put into action his theories of agrobiodiversity being the answer to achieving sustainable and resilient agriculture. Martin pursued his research into agroforestry, co-cropping, crop populations and new crop trials at Wakelyns where the first trees were planted in 1994 and planting continues today.
Wakelyns Agroforestry integrates trees for timber (ash, wild cherry, Italian alder, small-leaved lime, sycamore, oak and hornbeam), energy (hazel, hybrid willow and poplar) and fruit (apple, plum, pear, cherry, quince, peach and apricot) production into an organic crop rotation in four mature silvoarable systems. The next generation of the Wolfe family is evolving Wakelyns as a demonstration centre for agroforestry, while also developing other activities which add to the farming and food production. Via the Wakleyns website, you can access detailed information about what is grown, how it is managed, events, and much more.
The Agroforestry Research Trust is an educational and research organisation based in Devon, England, and founded (by Martin Crawford) in 1992 as a registered non-profit making charity, to educate and conduct research into all aspects of agroforestry and perennial crops. They carry out practical research on their trial grounds (which includes a 25-year-old 2-acre forest garden at the Dartington Estate, south Devon), run courses, publish guides, and sell plants, seeds and books. Various academic and practical research projects have been and continue to be undertaken since its formation. Courses and tours are important aspects of their work. Their website hosts an online shop, information on courses, and lots of useful information on various aspects of agroforestry and different agroforestry systems.
This 150-page book, published in 2019, is downloadable from the Soil Association website. The handbook introduces the theory of agroforestry and looks at practical management and design considerations. There is also information on markets and pricing. It is divided into sections on what is agroforestry, agroforestry systems design, silvopasture, silvoarable, hedges, windbreaks, and riparian buffers, and the economic case for agroforestry. The authors are leading researchers and practitioners with decades of experience in agroforestry from around the world.
This project supported developments and innovations in organic and low input dairy systems to maximise on the potential of these systems to deliver environmental goods and biodiversity, and optimise on economic, agronomic and nutritional advantages to develop innovative and sustainable organic and low input dairy systems and supply chains. Of particular interest in the project outputs is a farmer handbook containing a series of technical notes.
The project included investigating the potential of integrating bioenergy production from short rotation coppice with dairy systems for alternative feed resources, improved animal welfare, enhanced productivity and environmental benefits. The website presents findings from the project.
The project AGFOSY was implemented under programme ERASMUS+. Seven organisations from six European countries (Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Slovakia and Spain) were involved.
The ambition of the project (mainly focused on continental North and Central Europe) was to build a complex but flexible training system dealing with issues of agroforestry based mainly on case studies and best practice studies that will provide farmers with needed skills, knowledge, competences and motivation to implement agroforestry on their own farms. Training materials, a training platform, and short educational videos on the possibilities of agroforestry implementation on existing farms and the benefits of using it were developed. The links include a link to various study materials which are in the form of 10 modules – presentations with information about major agroforestry systems in Europe, ecological aspects of agroforestry, the historical context to agroforestry systems, management and practice of tree planting, silvopastoral agroforestry systems, silvoarable agroforestry systems, economy and the legal aspects in European agroforestry etc.
This project aimed to promote agroforestry practices in Europe that will advance sustainable rural development, i.e. improved competitiveness and social and environmental enhancement.
It had four main aims:
– To improve understanding of the technical, environmental and socio-economic functioning of existing and new extensive and intensive agroforestry systems;
– to identify, develop and field-test innovations related to provisioning and other ecosystem services (biodiversity, carbon storage, nutrient cycling, resilience, stress toleration) to improve the benefits and viability of agroforestry systems in Europe
– to develop and update designs and practices adapted for areas where agroforestry is currently not practised or is declining
– and to promote the wider adoption of appropriate agroforestry systems in Europe.
Central to the project was developing a number of participatory research and development networks where project participants worked with land managers and other stakeholders, using existing knowledge and experience of their own multifunctional systems, to identify key challenges and potential innovations to improve their systems. AGFORWARD used a participatory approach to ensure the effective involvement of all these stakeholders. In total, the project worked with 40 stakeholder groups and over 800 farmers and other stakeholders across 13 countries. All the major agroforestry systems in Europe were represented from Mediterranean areas in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal to the boreal areas of Sweden, and from grazed orchards in the UK to the wood pastures of Romania.
