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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AFINET (Agroforestry Innovation Networks (AFINET))

Teaser

Summary

Agroforestry (AF) is the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation (trees or shrubs) with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from the resulting ecological and economic interactions. Existing research performed indicates that appropriate application of AF principles and practices is a key avenue to help the European Union to achieve more sustainable methods of food and fibre production that produce both profits for farmers and environmental benefits. AF is one of the most innovation-prone subjects in todayâ€™s agriculture, and its development is a cross-sectoral issue that should involve all landscape users and stakeholders (farmers, foresters, river conservationists, bee-keepers, landscapers, hunting associations, roads & pathways departments...). Efficient innovation in AF implies a tight interaction between fundamental research and on-field practical experience that pioneer farmers (and other field-operators) are acquiring every day, by complementing the most advanced modern knowledge with proven traditional practices. Multi-partner initiatives have been launched here and there to encourage collaborative innovation through pooling of resources, exchanges of views and ideas and risk sharing. Success stories have started to emerge; however there is still a lot to be done with up-scaling and out-scaling of these local promising dynamics, which highlights the importance of empowering and connecting them. This could be efficiently done by establishing a network at European level to reveal, foster, and transfer high-level AF innovations, as well as calling public attention to the on-going agricultural transition. In the end, this initiative would greatly contribute to simultaneously increasing productivity and sustainability in agriculture, forestry and rural areas; put in practice insufficiently exploited research results; capture and spread innovative ideas from practices; and close the research and innovation divide in agriculture, forestry and rural areas.
The overall objective of AFINET is the promotion and innovation of European Agroforestry (AF) through the development of a multi-actor interactive and innovation-driven network, based on successful sharing of practical experiences and existing research knowledge, applied to different contexts, climates and agricultural sectors. AFINET will modify AF systems design and management in order to increase the agricultural systems production and profitability to promote a sustainable land management throughout Europe.

Work performed

AFINET project development has been carried out in due order following the the Grant agreement during the first period of the project. The first workpackage dealing with the creation of a extensive Regional Innovation Networks (RAINs) conducted to the successful establishment of the RAINs in the 9 countries with a large number of participants (almost 300 hundred) that provided a large number of challenges and innovations that should be developed in order to overcome the main drawbacks to foster AF in Europe, most of them common to several RAIN of the participant countries. The innovations were groups in four main groups: technical, economical, education and policy. WP2 is associated to the creation of a specific AF reservoir called knowledge cloud (KC) linked to AFINET that have been already delivered and will be the basis to upload information by stakeholders in the different AF languages in Europe. WP3 is associated to dissemination activities of the AFINET project. Most of the materials will be released in the second reporting period of AFINET trying to maximize the impact through the production of adapted materials to different types of stakeholders. WP4 aiming at promoting agroforestry synergies within AFINET has been quite intense and successful. The most important networking activities are linked to the EIP-Agri activities as contacts with several thematic networks have been established to identify good agroforestry practices and 20 agroforestry operational groups linked to the Rural National Networks have been identified, besides the recent supraregional Spanish operational group linked to the mapping of agroforestry good practices and associated to EU thematic networks (Nefertiti, Agri-Demo, PLAID, Inno4grass and Skin). WP5 deals with communication of the AFINET project. Several successful communication campaigns have been carried out. The large number of AF interested people reached (over a million) demonstrates a successful communication programme, while the timely release of the AFINET newsletter in the 9 EU languages of the AFINET participant countries have been a good start to disseminate key activities linked to agroforestry in Europe. WP6 establishes the adequate path to manage AFINET project in a successfully and effectively form as demonstrates the main results obtained with regard to the production of material and networking.

Final results

\"The establishment of an AF networking of stakeholders in Europe is key to increase agroforestry sustainability in Europe. The fact that over the 90% of the arable crops, permanent grasslands and permanent crops are suitable to use agroforestry reveals the enormous potential that AF (Mosquera-Losada et al. 2018) has in Europe to improve biodiversity, water quality and both mitigate and adapt farming systems to climate change (Mosquera-Losada et al. 2018). AFINET set the first steps to establish this AF network in 9 European countries with around 300 participants and expand the networking to other countries (i.e The Netherlands) and the knowledge cloud as a key place where stakeholders can share the AF recent advances and good practices in their own languages all over Europe. The work carried out by the RAINs identified over 60 innovatios to be developed and allowed to find around 20 AF Operational groups linked to Rural National Networks, mostly from regions outside the RAINs. The AFINET web site where the Knowledge cloud was placed is visited for an enourmous number of stakeholders interested in AF. The next AFINET steps dealing with the delivery of all dissemination materials will maximize the impact of AFINET on the sustainability of the farming systems in Europe helped by the almost 70 multipliers participating in the RAINs. The expansion of the AFINET main results will be reinforced through the collaboration with the almost 50 networks already found in the synergies that could be linked to AF. The participation of several AFINET members in the EIP-Agri Focus group entitled \"\"Agroforestry: introducing woody vegetation into specialised crop and livestock systems\"\" had also contributed to the increase of AF knowledge in Europe.\"