Venue
Coventry University Hub, Avenue de Tervuren 168, 1150 Brussels
About
The aim of this policy workshop is to facilitate an exchange between various actors (e.g. farmers, policy makers, civil society, researchers) on their various needs and barriers in order to co-create concrete recommendations on the future of agricultural and agroforestry policy in Europe that benefits all those involved in the food system.
The workshop will include a field trip between 13:30 to 17:30 to De Zwaluw Organic Farm. More information to be found here: https://biodezwaluw.be/.
To register click here
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While the agroforestry landscape for AF has been growing, with support found within the Common Agricultural Policy, state and regional policies, as well as within major EU legislations such as the Biodiversity and Farm to Fork Strategies of the European Green Deal, the majority of the budgets devoted to agroforestry, especially within the CAP, were not spent in the last two programming periods.
When looking at the strength of a country’s agroforestry policy landscape, the most beneficial policies are ones that support traditional systems, the implementation of new systems and the yearly support and management of those systems. However, it is rarely the case that policies include all three of these elements, which often creates hesitation and fear amongst farmers, and becomes the key barrier to farmers implementing agroforestry. This is compounded by the ever changing policy landscapes and the administrative burdens that come from long and complicated application processes for funding opportunities.
So, while policies do exist and although they are slowly expanding agroforestry, it is fair to say that they are not transforming the way we farm. Agroforestry needs to be scaled up in order to achieve major EU legislations such as the Green Deal and EU Forest Strategy, as well as to reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 55% by 2030, but in order to do so adequate training, financing and policies all need to be in place.
