Agroforestry Focus: Market Development

Edwin published in

Irish Agroforestry Forum

The Irish Agroforestry Forum aims to:
a. Promote the potential and benefits of agroforestry as a multifunctional land use option that integrates trees into agricultural and horticultural systems at a range of levels and spatial orientations, to sustainably produce nutritious, wholesome food and quality timber, while delivering a wide range of ecosystem services.
b. Promote, demonstrate and encourage agroforestry best practice by co-ordinating and organising educational and training activity focused on advisors, consultants, officials/inspectors and farmers/landowners.
c. Encourage innovative on-farm trials, transfer knowledge derived from existing trials and highlight potential areas for future research.
d. Act as a co-ordinated voice for those practicing and promoting agroforestry, collate ideas and feedback, and advise and make submissions to the appropriate policy makers on the potential issues surrounding agroforestry support and measures, to encourage the expansion of agroforestry and enhance its delivery of services.
e. Develop proposals to introduce trees on to farms towards supporting the goal of sustainable and resilient land use, while delivering a wide range of ecosystem services and public goods on the island of Ireland.

From the website you can access content relating to specific areas of agroforestry.

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Edwin published in

The Agroforestry Handbook

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.

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Edwin published in

AGROMIX

The AGROMIX project focuses on bringing together farmers, researchers and policymakers to explore agroecological solutions for more resilient land use in Europe, developing tools to implement these practices – with a focus on agroforestry and mixed farming. It provides information from previous projects, ongoing trial sites and experiences of farmers and land managers, to identify best options for transitioning towards these systems in each region of Europe.

It is involved in analysing current agricultural value chains, identifying obstacles to innovation in different agro-climatic and socio-economic contexts, and using these findings to present practical solutions to transition towards alternative land use systems.

From its network of 83 agricultural study sites, 12 pilot projects based in three agro-climatic zones (Atlantic, Continental, Mediterranean) are developing, testing and improving models and user-friendly tools to assist land managers in implementing and monitoring climate-resilient land use based on mixed farming and agroforestry principles. Results will be used to develop models and transition scenarios adapted to the climates of each agro-climatic region, presenting policy options for different scales and time frames.

On the website you can find information on the pilot projects and trial sites, scientific publications, videos, and a knowledge hub sharing various useful resources.

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Edwin published in

SustainFARM – Innovative and sustainable intensification of integrated food and non-food systems to develop climate-resilient agro-ecosystems in Europe

This project was led by the University of Copenhagen, with partners in Germany, Spain, Italy, Romania, Poland and the UK – ORC (Organic Research Centre). Via the project website you can access information on case studies, reports, and videos. It also produced the SustainFARM Public Goods Tool – a sustainability assessment for farms that combine food and non-food production.

The main objective was to enhance the agronomic, environmental and economic performance of integrated food and non-food production systems (IFNS) – in which trees, crops and livestock components are integrated in different ways at different scales and include traditional and innovative agroforestry – by optimising productivity and valorising woody components, residual wastes and co-products.

It adopted an innovative case-study approach, whereby locally relevant IFNS worked in close collaboration with the local end-users of the technology such as farmers, advisory services and policy makers. They co-generated technology, relevant at the local scale, to address productivity issues and enhancing valorisation of unused, residual and co-products. They investigated the economic and environmental performance of a range of IFNS across several agri-climatic zones of Europe and worked on designing innovative, resilient and climate-smart IFNS systems. Different means of valorising residual and co-products (woody components and residual wet olive cake etc.) and for multiple uses (bedding material, compost, bioenergy etc.) were demonstrated at facilities in UK and Italy and the knowledge generated shared through the stakeholder platforms.

ORC led work on developing a list of agronomic, environmental and economic indicators to evaluate the sustainability of IFNS. They contributed to the network of IFNS study sites and provided data on: a) Traditional boundary hedgerows with livestock; b) an innovative alley cropping silvopastoral system with short rotation coppice and livestock; c) traditional boundary hedgerows with arable and vegetable crops; d) and an innovative alley cropping silvoarable system with arable and vegetable crops. Project outputs (technical guides, a public goods tool and videos), can all be accessed via the ORC project page. The public goods tool has been updated beyond this project – see seperate entry

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Edwin published in

Agroforestry: Opportunity for European landscape and agriculture (AGFOSY)

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.

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FarmTree

Spreadsheets can help agroforestry practitioners plan for agroforestry investments. The FarmTree Tool quantifies and forecasts the performance of agroforestry systems and can be used to design plot plans. It holds by default climate, soil and tree/crop/input data of a particular regions in the world. When practitioners key in plot cover (annuals, perennials) the tool accesses soil data and climate projections, and generates plot plans with 60+ vegetation, yield, carbon, financial, labour, soil fertility, hydrology, and other indicators.
Project designers require landscape or project-level economic and financial assessments, or carbon and water performance projections. Single-plot projections can be combined into project cost-benefit analysis, typically to help assess the economic feasibility annexes of project proposals.
The tool is available under license that comes with training.

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Edwin published in

Agroforestry and Farm Woodland Modelling Tool

This customisable modelling tool explores the economic impacts of different agroforestry and farm woodland systems (silvopastoral orchards, shelterbelts, broadleaf woodland etc) on different farm types (cereals, horticulture, dairy etc). (Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link to download the model)

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