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