Policy actors: Overview and goals

At a national level, agroforestry has met resistance in agriculture and forestry departments of ministries around Europe. Even when agroforestry schemes were included in Common Agricultural policy plans, they tended to be implemented late in the programming period or they have not been implemented at all.

Agroforestry must be efficiently supported in the 2023-2028 CAP for economic, environmental, and climate reasons and to help the European Commission reach the objective to make the Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use sector climate neutral by 2035.

To avoid repeating past failures, policymakers need to:

• access evidence-based information on why the uptake of past and current measures has been so low;
• compare (un)successful policies between countries;
• identify innovative methods to support agroforestry, including possible fiscal reforms for tenant farmers and indirect measures such as national and voluntary policies for carbon farming.

Working in close collaboration with policymakers and local administrations, DigitAF supports policy actors (at regional, national and European level) in understanding and enhancing the role of agroforestry in agricultural, environmental and climate policies.

More specifically, DigitAF aims to:

• synthesize agroforestry policies across Europe and work with farmer groups and CAP Management Agencies to improve the new Common Agricultural Policy;
• adapt the reporting and computing tools used to examine the impact of different policies and incentives on the number of trees outside forests and the provision of environmental services;
• increase policymakers’ knowledge about agroforestry, its potential benefits, and the difficulties farmers face in the design and management of agroforestry;
• ensure a favourable context for agroforestry adoption by farmers and landowners.