Suchergebnisse

Agroforestry is one of the most prominent tools to make easy the transition of European agricultural and forestry farms to more sustainable land use systems such as agroforestry. The extent of agroforestry in Europe is 19.5 million of hectares, of which 85% is allocated to silvopastoralism mainly associated to European Southern countries but also present in some Eastern countries. Silvopasture is associated to the improvement of livestock farming systems providing feed in a more sustainable way while increasing the multiple ouputs production from the same unit of land, therefore improving rural development. The current share of silvopastoralism in the EU is the 10% of the permanent grasslands which shows the huge potential that this land use has. The second most important agroforestry systems are the homegardens which represents the 8.3% of agroforestry lands and occupy around 8.65% of the land allocated to homegardens. Forest farming is not inventoried at all, while silvoarable only occupies almost half a million hectares and less than 1% of the arable land. Europe fosters agroforestry mostly through the Rural Development programs with more than 383 and 467 measures fostering agroforestry in one way or another in the previous CAP (2007-2013) and current CAP (2014-2020). Future measures should be fostered through the CAP Strategic plans developed at country level

Agroforestry understood as the combination of a woody component (forest tree, shrub, fruit tree) with an agricultural use of the understory is not clearly identified as such by the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Despite the protection and promotion of the woody component in different parts of the CAP political text, the identification of agroforestry is not clear, although it can be recognised in the description of some landscape features, such as isolated trees and different types of hedgerows. Moreover, it is important to identify the extent of such woody components promoted by the CAP in agricultural lands to validate the impact of current and future measures. This paper aims at the characterisation of the current extent of landscape features all over Europe by analysing the Rural Development Program (RDP) measures within the CAP 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 that promote said features in Europe to increase the ecosystem service delivery. Isolated trees and hedgerows are protected unsatisfactorily through the Cross-compliance and Greening of CAP Pillar I. In contrast, Agri-environment measures associated to Pillar II are used in most European countries to protect both isolated trees and hedgerows and to promote them as boundary elements. The promotion of hedgerows and isolated trees mainly related to silvoarable and silvopastoral agroforestry practices is aimed at the promotion of the ecosystem services (such as water protection and biodiversity) and improvement in resilience (such as adaptation to climate change) they provide; therefore, the agroforestry environment benefits are indeed recognised. Landscape features comprising woody perennials should be associated with agroforestry when present in arable and permanent grasslands.

Project context The European Union has targets to improve the competitiveness of European agriculture and forestry, whilst improving the environment and the quality of rural life. At the same time there is a need to improve our resilience to climate change and to enhance biodiversity. During the twentieth century, large productivity advances were made by managing agriculture and forestry as separate practices, but often at a high environmental cost. In order to address landscape-scale issues such as biodiversity and water quality, we argue that farmers and society will benefit from considering landuse as a continuum including both agriculture and trees, and that there are significant opportunities for European farmers and society to benefit from a closer integration of trees with agriculture. Agroforestry is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. ; AGFORWARD (Grant Agreement N° 613520) is co-funded by the European Commission, Directorate General for Research & Innovation, within the 7th Framework Programme of RTD. The views and opinions expressed in this report are purely those of the writers and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission