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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Social Movements, Institutions and Governance
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1417740
This article is part of the Research Topic Agroforestry for biodiversity and ecosystem services View all 8 articles

Policies for agroforestry, a narrative review of four 'continental' regions: EU, India, Brazil, and the U.S.A

Provisionally accepted
Rosemary Venn Rosemary Venn 1,2*Jesse Buratti-Donham Jesse Buratti-Donham 3Esteban-Fernando Montero de Oliveira Esteban-Fernando Montero de Oliveira 4Eden Jonathan Eden Jonathan 1,2Sabine Reinecke Sabine Reinecke 4,5
  • 1 Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
  • 2 Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
  • 3 Other, Brussels, Belgium
  • 4 University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
  • 5 Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL), Frick, Aargau, Switzerland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Agroforestry is receiving renewed interest due to its highly diversified, multifunctional nature. With a long history and roots in many indigenous farming systems, agroforestry offers a 'win-win' for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, on-farm profitability, resilience, and social wellbeing. However, the re-integration of trees on farms goes against the previous decades' push for de-mixing, intensifying, and simplifying production methods, and farmer uptake remains low. As understanding and support for more integrated, complex farming systems builds, an enabling policy landscape is needed. This narrative policy review considers policies for agroforestry across four 'continental' regions: the EU, India, Brazil, and the U.S.A. Using an agroecological framework, we explore the content, development, objectives, and alignment of both direct and indirect policies to provide insight into: how policies for agroforestry are currently framed; their development process; and, whether over-lapping and interconnected policy objectives are included. We find that policies for agroforestry are increasing gradually, but are typically confined to an agronomic understanding, with limited inclusion of the socio-political aspects of food and farming. Except in Brazil, policies appear to be narrow in scope, with few stakeholders included in their development. Policies do not challenge the status quo of the dominant corporate agri-food system and appear to miss the transformative potential of agroforestry. We recommend: greater coordination of policy instruments to achieve co-benefits; focused integration of agricultural and climate policies; greater inclusion of diverse stakeholders in policy development; and a widening of agroforestry systems' objectives, both in policy and practice.

    Keywords: agroforestry1, multifunctional2, sustainable food systems3, policy coherence4, nature-based solutions5

    Received: 15 Apr 2024; Accepted: 28 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Venn, Buratti-Donham, Montero de Oliveira, Jonathan and Reinecke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Rosemary Venn, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.