| On Topic
The benefits of agroforestry The benefits of agroforestry to farmers have been blocked by uncertainties - but times are changing.
raditionally there’s been a hard separation between the disciplines of agriculture, horticulture and forestry. You focus on one and you don’t mix. This mindset has been reinforced by the CAP and the lack of clarity over whether grants may be lost from introducing trees onto land used for agriculture. There have been only vague promises so far from Government on “public money for public goods” as part of its plan for agriculture postBrexit. Our new reality is shaped by the ratcheting of the need to reduce greenhouse gases and increase carbon storage, with pressure from both from government policy and public awareness. This has been backed up by sector
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initiatives like the NFU’s 2040 goals ‘Achieving Net Zero’. Whatever form Brexit takes, the drive to carbon neutral agriculture is providing a new impetus for changes to the nature of British agriculture. More specifically, there’s the urgent need for more tree-planting. Scientists internationally have argued that planting more trees is the most effective - cheapest, most straightforward - way to absorb carbon on a vast scale. The UK’s Committee on Climate Change wants 1.5 billion trees across the nation by 2050, 30,000 hectares a year. Despite the national campaign, levels of tree-planting are falling short (13,400 hectares of trees were planted in the year to March 2019). Agroforestry ties together the loose ends of this picture. It offers farm businesses a means of becoming net absorbers of greenhouse
gases, a way to reduce air and water pollution (e.g. ammonia emissions, nitrate leaching and soil erosion), improve on-farm biodiversity - as well as the opportunity to maintain food production, secure price premiums, and find new sources of revenue. What’s needed is sensible land management, with eyes open to the benefits of integrating different forms of farming with trees. Intensive arable and livestock systems can produce high yields per unit area and labour, but they can also have the kinds of negative environmental effects that will increasingly need to be accounted for. Some British farms are already practising agroforestry - free range egg farms for example - but the full range of practices and their potential tend not to be recognised.
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