Agroforestry Systems

, Volume 90, Issue 3, pp 385–394 | Cite as

Swiss farmers don’t adopt agroforestry because they fear for their reputation

  • F. Sereke
  • M. Dobricki
  • J. Wilkes
  • A. Kaeser
  • A. R. Graves
  • E. Szerencsits
  • F. Herzog
Article
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Abstract

Agricultural policy in Europe is moving towards greater support of multifunctional agriculture, such as agroforestry systems. However, modern farmers appear to be resisting this change. Trees in agricultural landscapes have been declining, despite increasing direct payments for their ecosystem services. To understand the drivers of farmer behaviour in Switzerland with regard to practicing agroforestry, we interviewed 50 farmers using a semi-quantitative and open ended questionnaire. In terms of potential motivations for adoption of agroforestry, most farmers gave highest scores to habitat ecosystem services, both for livestock and wildlife. Low scores were given to productivity, profitability and ecological direct payments. Farmers resisting adoption concluded that practising agroforestry would not have a positive impact on their reputation. They also attributed significantly lower scores to perceived behavioural control. We conclude that payments for ecosystem services will be unlikely to change farmers’ behaviour, as long as their expectations and knowledge are not appropriately addressed. Transdisciplinary co-production of agro-ecological knowledge could help to change their attitude.

Keywords

Agriculture Ecosystem service Farmer attitude Farmer behaviour Participatory research Temperate agroforestry 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We like to thank the farmers for spending their valuable time in sharing their perspectives on restoring trees and multifunctional landscapes. Comments of two anonymous reviewers significantly improved the manuscript. Part of this study was funded by the MAVA Foundation and by the FP7 project AgForward (Grant 613520). The research is based on interviews with farmers. They were volunteers and they agreed for the results to be analysed and published. Farmers remain anonymous.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • F. Sereke
    • 1
    • 2
  • M. Dobricki
    • 1
    • 3
  • J. Wilkes
    • 1
    • 4
  • A. Kaeser
    • 1
  • A. R. Graves
    • 5
  • E. Szerencsits
    • 1
  • F. Herzog
    • 1
  1. 1.Agroscope, Institute for Sustainability SciencesZurichSwitzerland
  2. 2.School of Agricultural, Forest and Food SciencesZollikofenSwitzerland
  3. 3.Department of Psychology 1Julius-Maximilian University of WürzburgWürzburgGermany
  4. 4.Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH-ZurichZurichSwitzerland
  5. 5.Natural Resources Management InstituteCranfield UniversityCranfieldUK

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