Integrating soil erosion and profitability in the assessment of silvoarable agroforestry at the landscape scale

摘要: Silvoarable Agroforestry (SAF), the deliberate combined use of trees and crops on the same area of land, can potentially improve the environmental performance of agricultural systems in Europe. However, such changes in land use also need to be seen in terms of their economic implications. The present study makes a combined environmental and economic assessment of poplar SAF near Torrijos in Castilla la Mancha in Spain. Six different silvoarable systems were compared with existing arable agriculture. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) was used to predict soil erosion under the different silvoarable and arable systems and an economic model was used to predict their NPV. SAF with contouring decreased predicted soil loss by 80% compared with the existing arable system. Economic analysis showed that the NPV of densely planted, but widely spaced silvoarable systems could be similar to the NPV of existing arable systems. However, current grant schemes were higher for the arable systems and made the silvoarable systems less attractive in terms of cash flow and NPV. It is concluded that where soil erosion is problematic, grant systems should not increase the attractiveness of arable systems at the expense of SAF.