Policy advice | Project report Towards an enabling environment for agroforestry in Flanders: Roadmap 2.0
Agroforestry is a farming system receiving attention for its considerable potential to respond to several major agricultural and societal challenges in Flanders and Europe. Although in Flanders we have been working on developing agroforestry policy and funding since 2011, practitioners still often find themselves in an uncertain context regarding technicalities, financing and legislation. As a result, agroforestry initiatives largely remain the work of pioneers. Agroforestry is knowledge-intensive and requires a long-term commitment. The challenges faced by practitioners are often representative of the agricultural sector as a whole, but are particularly typical for pioneers in agroecological initiatives: land-based agricultural practices characterized by their commitment to diversity and multifunctionality, natural processes, enhancement of ecosystem services and offering a wide(r) diversity of (sometimes new) products.
The transformative potential of these agroforestry (and by extension other agroecological) initiatives is significant, but can only be realized if there is a willingness to institutionalize these innovative practices in our agrifood system based on a supportive base, cooperation and collaboration. Many actors play a guiding role in this story, and action must be taken simultaneously at several levels. The aim of this 'roadmap' is to offer a structured framework and inspiration for such action. We do this through five concrete development pathways: (1) the scientific and technological pathway, (2) the economic pathway, (3) the policy pathway, (4) the education pathway and (5) the social pathway. For each of these pathways, we identify the current bottlenecks and opportunities, put forward a future vision for 2035, and suggest priority actions to stimulate agroforestry in Flanders and beyond.
This roadmap should be read and used as a dynamic working document: it is never completely finished, evolves with changing circumstances and is intended as a guide and reference framework for the further development of customized actions and recommendations. The future visions formulated in this report thus serve as a kind of compass showing what has already been realized and what still needs to be realized. In short, they bring a focus and then also help give direction to activities that contribute to the future visions and the resulting objectives and action plans.
In the next phase, the predetermined visions and actions will still have to be operationalized into "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound) objectives and concrete action plans. Before this can be achieved, e.g. also success indicators will have to be identified.
This roadmap shows that creating a supportive environment for agroforestry (and even broader for all pioneering forms of agroecological agriculture) goes beyond making subsidies available to farmers. A systemic approach that focuses not only on farmers but activates all actors in the (circular) food system is needed. This requires adjustments in policy, education, research and the agri-food chain as a whole. Sometimes these are very small adjustments, sometimes they are structural and transformative of nature. Success will depend on support from a broad range of actors.
We wish to emphasize that this roadmap should also be read and used as a stepping stone. Realizing this tangible, concrete pathway around agroforestry could contribute to enabling many other forms of pioneering, agroecological agriculture.
Finally, please note that this English version is a translation of the original Roadmap written in Dutch, and developed specifically for the Flemish context. Some context-specific concepts or cases are hard to translate and therefore might read somewhat oddly.
Read the full version of the Agroforestry Roadmap 2.0
Full version of the Roadmap can be found here: Agroforestry Roadmap 2.0 (English version) If you would like to cite this source, please visit our Zenodo hub through this link: Towards an enabling environment for agroforestry in Flanders: Roadmap 2.0
