Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIGITAF (DIGItal Tools to help AgroForestry meet climate, biodiversity and farming sustainability goals: linking field and cloud)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30
Although AF is recognised as one of the most effective climate change mitigation measures, few Member States had successfully supported it in their recent funding programmes. Farmers’ concerns include the technical feasibility of AF, difficulty to predict the impact of their choices made and lack of recognition of AF benefits.
The wider agricultural sector is rapidly being digitised. It creates new opportunities for farmers and advisers to leverage this technology to improve their financial and ecological performances, and many European farmers are already using DSS to support them in their daily work at the field and management level. However, the development of such tools for AF is still in its infancy. DigitAF partners believe that by combining simulation models and data, it is possible to create digital tools supporting decision-makers to better understand the complex functioning of AFS, take into account local specificities and make better decisions. DigitAF set up the necessary standards, IT architecture and code sharing opportunities so that tools will overcome these problems. Tools adapted/developed during the project will serve as demonstration vectors for engagement towards the FAIR principles to boost their usage and applicability between peers and downstream marketable applied tools. The project’s objectives are to develop, improve, and test digital tools to:
-Support policymakers and administrations at regional, national and European scales in devising and implementing efficient agroforestry and carbon farming related policies, and monitor their impact on biodiversity, climate change mitigation and agricultural sustainability
-Support practitioners of agroforestry to optimise the design and management of agroforestry systems to increase the technical feasibility, productivity, economic performance and sustainability
-Allow actors in agroforestry value chains to verify and market agroforestry benefits, including enhanced biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil health, and support consumers seeking good value and environmentally beneficial products
The wider agricultural sector is rapidly being digitised. It creates new opportunities for farmers and advisers to leverage this technology to improve their financial and ecological performances, and many European farmers are already using DSS to support them in their daily work at the field and management level. However, the development of such tools for AF is still in its infancy. DigitAF partners believe that by combining simulation models and data, it is possible to create digital tools supporting decision-makers to better understand the complex functioning of AFS, take into account local specificities and make better decisions. DigitAF set up the necessary standards, IT architecture and code sharing opportunities so that tools will overcome these problems. Tools adapted/developed during the project will serve as demonstration vectors for engagement towards the FAIR principles to boost their usage and applicability between peers and downstream marketable applied tools. The project’s objectives are to develop, improve, and test digital tools to:
-Support policymakers and administrations at regional, national and European scales in devising and implementing efficient agroforestry and carbon farming related policies, and monitor their impact on biodiversity, climate change mitigation and agricultural sustainability
-Support practitioners of agroforestry to optimise the design and management of agroforestry systems to increase the technical feasibility, productivity, economic performance and sustainability
-Allow actors in agroforestry value chains to verify and market agroforestry benefits, including enhanced biodiversity, carbon sequestration, soil health, and support consumers seeking good value and environmentally beneficial products
During its first 36 months, DigitAF established six Living Labs across Europe, involving more than one hundred stakeholders. These LLs identified needs through surveys, mapped value chains, and assessed the costs and benefits of baseline practices and agroforestry interventions. Policy analysis was carried out at national and European levels, resulting in policy briefs on agroforestry. Key deliverables included a database on agri-environmental indices, methods to record agroforestry areas and greenhouse gas emissions, and the LPIS Sustainability Compass, alongside contributions to carbon farming and certification.
An online catalogue was created, integrating technical and financial assessment tools. Working groups on financial instruments and tree species selection produced roadmaps and publications, while field trials provided data to validate models. Research on productivity, microclimate, and water status led to improved simulation approaches, including coupling hydraulic and agroforestry models. New results on light distribution were published, and LPIS data integration into the Open Platform Architecture progressed. Value chain analysis was consolidated with a European agroforestry map, now available on the DigitAF website with inventories of products and services. Tools to assess biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and soil health were developed, with protocols and measurements already underway. Work on certification and branding progressed and will lead to guidelines for viable business models.
The Agroforestry Virtual Space has evolved into a functioning ecosystem, hosting open-source codes, policy briefs, datasets, catalogues, and the agroforestry map, and is now actively used by a growing online community.
Together, these advances provide evidence on the benefits and challenges of agroforestry in Europe, while building a digital infrastructure that supports co-design, testing, and adoption of practices through interoperable tools, open data, and strong stakeholder engagement.
An online catalogue was created, integrating technical and financial assessment tools. Working groups on financial instruments and tree species selection produced roadmaps and publications, while field trials provided data to validate models. Research on productivity, microclimate, and water status led to improved simulation approaches, including coupling hydraulic and agroforestry models. New results on light distribution were published, and LPIS data integration into the Open Platform Architecture progressed. Value chain analysis was consolidated with a European agroforestry map, now available on the DigitAF website with inventories of products and services. Tools to assess biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions and soil health were developed, with protocols and measurements already underway. Work on certification and branding progressed and will lead to guidelines for viable business models.
The Agroforestry Virtual Space has evolved into a functioning ecosystem, hosting open-source codes, policy briefs, datasets, catalogues, and the agroforestry map, and is now actively used by a growing online community.
Together, these advances provide evidence on the benefits and challenges of agroforestry in Europe, while building a digital infrastructure that supports co-design, testing, and adoption of practices through interoperable tools, open data, and strong stakeholder engagement.
During the first and second periods, the results which will have an impact beyond State of the art are:
-AgroforesTreeAdvice is an app, which is still under development, to help tree selection for agroforestry farmers, allowing them to define their site conditions and objectives, compute the adaptation and efficiency scores of each tree species and visualize the results in graph or table form.
-The Open Farm Carbon Tracker is an open-source tool for diagnostics of farm scale greenhouse gas fluxes. The OFCT not only includes a farm level baseline assessment of current operations, but also has a module to model and project effects on emissions of changes in land-use, such as the transition from arable farming to agroforestry. This additional temporal aspect makes it possible to assess expected effect of land-use changes and other initiatives on future GWP of the operation.
-Blockchain technologies for Iberian dehesa products is a blockchain as an immense accounting book, incorporating all the relevant information generated in the value chain in order to collect, process and manage, in a secure, trusty and confidential manner, large amounts of information from all participants in the value chain. Blockchain technology generates trust in the final consumer and develops a differentiation strategy of products.
-Open Platform Architecture is the result of an analysis of 56 agroforestry tools, and identified 7 modules: species selection, system design, performance, GHG, biodiversity, and financial assessments and community tools. Collaboration between tool developers is underway to develop data exchange standards within and between these modules to allow shared APIs, thus ensuring interoperability, efficient development, extensibility, and vendor independence.
-AgroforesTreeAdvice is an app, which is still under development, to help tree selection for agroforestry farmers, allowing them to define their site conditions and objectives, compute the adaptation and efficiency scores of each tree species and visualize the results in graph or table form.
-The Open Farm Carbon Tracker is an open-source tool for diagnostics of farm scale greenhouse gas fluxes. The OFCT not only includes a farm level baseline assessment of current operations, but also has a module to model and project effects on emissions of changes in land-use, such as the transition from arable farming to agroforestry. This additional temporal aspect makes it possible to assess expected effect of land-use changes and other initiatives on future GWP of the operation.
-Blockchain technologies for Iberian dehesa products is a blockchain as an immense accounting book, incorporating all the relevant information generated in the value chain in order to collect, process and manage, in a secure, trusty and confidential manner, large amounts of information from all participants in the value chain. Blockchain technology generates trust in the final consumer and develops a differentiation strategy of products.
-Open Platform Architecture is the result of an analysis of 56 agroforestry tools, and identified 7 modules: species selection, system design, performance, GHG, biodiversity, and financial assessments and community tools. Collaboration between tool developers is underway to develop data exchange standards within and between these modules to allow shared APIs, thus ensuring interoperability, efficient development, extensibility, and vendor independence.