Transformation towards temperate agroforestry and the role of law: a typology of actor perspectives

Abstract Agroforestry could play a pivotal role for agricultural transformation, but it is little adopted in temperate Europe. While prior research identified policy and law as barriers to the expansion of agroforestry, little is known about the interlinkages between actors’ personal views on agroforestry and implications for their stance on the legal framework. To address this research gap, we draw on 54 semi-structured interviews with actors from agriculture, nature conservation and administration in Germany. Based on ideal-type analysis and the heuristic of the three spheres of transformation, we propose a typology of six actor perspectives that result in different levers to scaling-up agroforestry. Actors most often associated agroforestry with beneficial regulating ecosystem services and accompanying risks for agricultural production. At the same time, actors’ understanding of agroforestry and the need to further develop the legal framework was highly diverse. From a farm-resilience-oriented and transformation-oriented perspective, actors called for lifting legal limitations and barriers for agroforestry. In contrast, conservation-oriented and traditional-agroforestry-oriented actors argued for maintaining and implementing the legal protection of traditional agroforestry systems and restrictions for modern agroforestry systems in sensitive areas. Moreover, actors that followed a production-oriented perspective highlighted the role of market dynamics. From an administration-oriented perspective, administrative guidelines and knowledge dissemination on the practical implementation of agroforestry were seen as key levers. Overall, our article offers insights into the close relationship between the personal and political sphere of transformation towards agroforestry and may inform the further development of agroforestry law.