7 January 2016
Agroforestry at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, UK
The integration of trees and farming featured highly at the Oxford Real Farming Conference at the Oxford Town Hall in the UK on 7 January 2016.
John Tucker from the UK Woodland Trust chaired a session to a packed council chamber on "Agroforestry: what it is and why it's needed". Paul Burgess (from Cranfield University and the AGFORWARD project) gave an overview on "Agroforestry and its benefits" focusing on the benefits of combining food production with trees. Martin Wolfe then gave an informative talk about the implementation of agroforestry on his farm in Suffolk in Eastern England. Lastly Stephen Briggs, who is a tenant farmer near Peterborough also in Eastern England, gave an illustrated talk about his experience of agroforestry. This includes a novel agroforestry system on his arable farm to combat wind erosion of the soil. Both Martin and Stephen are working with the “Silvoarable Systems for the UK” stakeholder group within the AGFORWARD project The presentations were followed by a lively question and answer session.
Immediately after the first session, there was a second session entitled "Tree and woods: potential allies in livestock productivity". Helen Chesshire from the Woodland Trust interviewed Hamish Thomson and Rebecca Hosking on how trees are being practically incorporated on farms in South West England to the benefit of both farmers and livestock. The Woodland Trust produces a range of documents which describe the integration of trees on either arable of livestock farms as listed below.
Download presentations
Burgess, P.J. (2016). Overview of Agroforestry and its Benefits. Presentation at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, Oxford, UK. 7 January 2016. Cranfield, UK: Cranfield University.
Briggs, S. (2016). Agroforestry in Practice: What’s Possible in the UK. Presentation at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, Oxford, UK. 7 January 2016.
Wolfe, M. (2016). Agroforestry: Then, Now and Onwards. Presentation at the Oxford Real Farming Conference, Oxford, UK. 7 January 2016. The Organic Research Centre and Wakelyns Agroforestry, Suffolk
Woodland Trust (2012). Benefits of trees on arable farms. Woodland Trust Report. Grantham, Lincolnshire: Woodland Trust.16 pp.
Benefits-of-trees-to-arable-farms-evidence-report.pdf (6.6 MiB)
Woodland Trust (2012). Benefit of trees on livestock farms. Woodland Trust Report. Grantham, Lincolnshire: Woodland Trust. 16 pp.