FARM TREE: 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 practiced in the UK. Strategic planning and successful implementation require more knowledge on achieving optimal environmental benefits, balanced with information of the associated 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. Hereby, we will evaluate planting strategies (e.g., regional or landscape priority areas or species), as well as farm level planting designs (species and spatial organisation of planting) within the context of different strategies. Providing knowledge on which planting scenarios realistically work best where, combined with tools and pathways on how to achieve this will: (1) improve farmer decision making, (2) aid the development of better targeted and more flexible policies and grant schemes, and (3) ultimately lower barriers for tree expansion on farmland.

We take a holistic approach to benefits and inherent trade-offs and consider that tree planting decisions are subject to diverse factors, from the personal to the policy level; but also focus in on carbon sequestration and water use solutions, alongside wider environmental benefits. We will provide an interactive web-based decision support tool to guide tree expansion on farmland; and identify how public policies (regulations, grant schemes) and market-based measures interact to incentivise (or deter) planting.

The research will be articulated around three integrated work packages (WP).

In WP1, we will collate socio-economic incentives and barriers from the land manager perspective, building on existing UK initiatives and farmer networks of project partners in agroforestry. Using participatory research methods, WP1 will identify farm level opportunities and constraints to integrate trees using designs that fit well into farming systems. At the national level, we will focus on insights relating to strategic policies that create opportunities for agroforestry expansion.

WP2 will investigate the spatial and temporal effects of agroforestry strategies and designs on water and carbon cycling at the national/landscape and farm scale, while also considering soil health and biodiversity. For diverse landscape and farm settings, it will identify planting scenarios that deliver optimal ecosystem services, now and under future scenarios. This will be achieved via integrated ecohydrological and carbon modelling and build on previous woodland landscape capability mapping for ecosystem services and data from demonstrator farms. Integrating outcomes from WP1 and WP3, it will also deliver a set of scenarios that consider socio-economic constraints alongside the environmental benefits.

WP1 and WP2 are fully integrated via WP3, which involves the iterative development of viable tree planting scenarios on farms that consider socio-economic and environmental aspects within UK landscapes. Co- developed with project partners and stakeholders, decision support tools (interactive website for farmers; policy briefings; and recommendations for long term farmer-led innovation monitoring labs) form key outputs.