PA1: The resilience to climate change of mixed farming and agroforestry - explaining a complex story
PA1: The resilience to climate change of mixed farming and agroforestry - explaining a complex story
In the agricultural context, resilience is the ability of a farm to persist, recover and keep functioning with and despite external disturbances. In the face of climate change and fluctuating or collapsing markets, complex land use systems – such as mixed farming and agroforestry, where different combinations of livestock, trees and crops coexist – can be more resilient than conventional monoculture systems.
In AGROMIX we study these complex systems, aiming to understand the factors that supporting their resilience, and unravelling the regional diversities of these systems across Europe. Resilient and climate-smart farm management brings important benefits – called ecosystem services – which include the regulation of water availability, the improvement of soil quality and biodiversity, natural pest control, social benefits, and the protection of cultural heritage.
Integrating these systems support farms to move towards a circular agro-food system, reducing external inputs and emissions whilst maintaining or even increasing their productivity. The resilience framework developed by AGROMIX offers guidance for farmers to locate their system in the multiplicity of components across the ecological, economic and social dimensions. Developing farmers’ capacities to adapt or restructure their land use system would increase farms’ resilience to a changing world in the long term.
In the agricultural context, resilience is the ability of a farm to persist, recover and keep functioning with and despite external disturbances. In the face of climate change and fluctuating or collapsing markets, complex land use systems – such as mixed farming and agroforestry, where different combinations of livestock, trees and crops coexist – can be more resilient than conventional monoculture systems.
In AGROMIX we study these complex systems, aiming to understand the factors that supporting their resilience, and unravelling the regional diversities of these systems across Europe. Resilient and climate-smart farm management brings important benefits – called ecosystem services – which include the regulation of water availability, the improvement of soil quality and biodiversity, natural pest control, social benefits, and the protection of cultural heritage.
Integrating these systems support farms to move towards a circular agro-food system, reducing external inputs and emissions whilst maintaining or even increasing their productivity. The resilience framework developed by AGROMIX offers guidance for farmers to locate their system in the multiplicity of components across the ecological, economic and social dimensions. Developing farmers’ capacities to adapt or restructure their land use system would increase farms’ resilience to a changing world in the long term.
AGROforestry and MIXed farming systems - Participatory research to drive the transition to a resilient and efficient land use in Europe
Ongoing | 2020-2024
- Main funding source
- Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
- Geographical location
- United Kingdom
Project Keywords
- Aquaculture
- Arable crops
- Organic farming
- Agro-ecology
- Crop rotation/crop diversification/dual-purpose or mixed cropping
- Biodiversity and nature
- Climate change (incl. GHG reduction, adaptation and mitigation, and other air related issues)
- Competitiveness/new business models
- Farm diversification
- Landscape/land management
- Soil
- Supply chain, marketing and consumption