ETD

• agroforestry
• carbon farming
• climate change
• Common Agricultural Policy
• digital tools

Agroforestry (AF) is recognized as both adaptation and mitigation strategy to climate change thanks to its capacity to deliver multiple ecosystem services (e.g., food and timber production, water and nutrient cycles, carbon sequestration). Defined as “the practice of deliberately integrating woody vegetation with crop and/or animal systems to benefit from ecological and economic interactions,” AF currently covers 6.5% of Europe’s agricultural area. The European Green Deal promotes AF, but its adoption remains limited. This thesis analysed the agricultural policies to identify their limits in supporting AF and tests a tool to account carbon sequestration. A review of the evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy with focus on measures for AF in Italy was carried out. Moreover, the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation was evaluated as future support scheme. To assess AF’s carbon potential, the Farm Carbon Calculator was applied to five case studies (two commercial farms and three long-term experiments), testing whether EU-supported measures were effective in sequestration. Lack of a common definition and classification within EU policies hinders adoption, creating uncertainty on which systems are eligible for support. To address this, a classification of Italian AF systems was created as a guide for farmers and policymakers. Results show that some past measures, such as the MacSharry reform’s 20/80 afforestation scheme, effectively sequestered carbon.