New LTE in Tuscany to Understand the Potential Contribution of Agroforestry to a More Resilient Agriculture

Agroforestry (AF), “the deliberate integration of woody vegetation (trees and/or shrubs) as an upper storey on land, with pasture (consumed by animals) or an agricultural crop in the lower storey” (Mosquera-Losada et al., 2017), is gaining pace as a land-use strategy to cope with climate change and provide environmental, economic, and social benefits (Kay et al., 2019). Recent studies in Italy highlighted the historic importance of traditional and innovative AFsystems and their capacity to produce climate-smart food and sustainable high value timber production (Paris et al., 2019). During the past century, the tradition of separating between science and practice in agriculture and in forestry has left many opportunities for a functional use of trees in the agroecosystem unexploited (Duguma et al., 2018). Trees may play an important role in the sustainable management of agricultural landscapes through increased ecosystem services generated by both traditional andinnovative AF systems (Jarvis et al., 2013). For this reason, a multidisciplinary team is focusing on the design and the establishment of a 40-ha Long Term Experiment (LTE), to evaluate the transition of a conventional arable system towards AF in Tuscany. The purpose of the LTE is to assess the sustainability and the feasibility of AF compared with conventional arable and forestry systems as well as the potential transferability to real farm conditions. The research team has the priority to investigate synergies and trade-offs among the two main components of the agroforestry system, in order to evaluate whether a diversification, based on annual and perennial herbaceous and woody species consociation, may enhance the resilience of cropping systems to variability of weather conditions. Secondly, it is mandatory to evaluate the potential of AF systems to climate change mitigation and efficient resource exploitation, considering, in particular, the effects on carbon storage, soil fertility and biodiversity.