Farmers’ attitudes towards, and intentions to adopt, agroforestry on farms in lowland South-East and East England

Abstract

Agroforestry (AF) is a land use that incorporates growing trees into agricultural crops and/or livestock production on the same piece of land. Due to tree cover and growth, AF has the potential to generate additional products, enhance biogenic carbon capture and storage, reduce soil erosion and surface water run-off and improve soil structure and fertility. These effects are likely to improve farmers’ financial return with minimal land loss to agricultural production. To date, there has been very little uptake of AF in the UK despite awareness of these benefits and increasing policy support. This suggests that there are barriers to adopting AF that policy, or market developments, have yet to address. This study set out to identify these barriers, along with potential drivers to further uptake of AF in South-East and East lowland England by means of a survey of 224 farmers and landowners in 2019 covering a range of farm sizes and types. Of those farmers who said they might consider planting small areas of AF, small woods and plantations were the preferred option. Silvo-arable AF was preferred to silvo-pastoral AF. If raised to the regional level, this could take up to some 5 % of the total farmed area. Financial reasons were behind some of the reluctance to plant, as was the view that trees might interfere with other farm operations. Farmers might need both planting grants and maintenance payments to help the UK Government reach their woodland planting goal to achieve the UK net-zero target by 2050.