FARM TREE

Project Summary:

Balancing farm and landscape-scale demands for integrating trees on agricultural land

Although agroforestry (integrating trees or shrubs on pasture or crop farmland) has great potential to provide ecosystem services and address multiple climate change challenges, it is not widely practised in the UK. Strategic planning and success require more knowledge on achieving optimal environmental benefits, balanced with the knowledge of socio-economic, cultural and policy incentives, barriers, and challenges to increasing agroforestry.

Bringing together a strong multidisciplinary team of social and environmental scientists with partners who are practitioners and stakeholders in woodland and agricultural organisations, the FARM TREE project addresses these needs by exploring which planting scenarios might work best under different combinations of environmental and socio-economic conditions.

Researchers leading this study will build on existing agroforestry initiatives and develop practical tools for farmers to enhance the expansion of trees on agricultural land, including:

• A reference set of planting schemes for farms that are situated on a variety of landscapes, and including detailed information on their environmental effects on the land.
• A web-based tool for farm managers that demonstrates and visualises the optimal schemes for their farms, with an indication of the environmental and socio-economic impacts on the farm’s land and farming business.
• Recommendations for government policymakers on the best strategies for planting trees on farmland in the UK.
• A framework for a long-term, co-designed monitoring programme of planting schemes in rural areas