Food from Forests? How to Label Agroforestry Food

What we eat has long since become an environmental and social issue of utmost importance. Where does our food come from? What are the consequences of our consumption for the environment, animals and farmers? And which aspects can farmers or consumers actually influence? We often know little about how and where our food is produced. However, for various reasons we increasingly want to make well-informed decisions when buying food.

Feta cheese and olives — a symbol of the Mediterranean diet and often protected as Geographical Indications. Source: Wikimedia (red-yellow label: Protected Designation of Origin [PDO]. blue-yellow label: Protected Geographical Indication [PGI]. Source: europe.eu)

Food labels try to fill this gap by labelling and promoting different quality traits, product origins or environmental criteria. In a recent study, we examined the possibilities and obstacles associated with the labelling of agroforestry products.

Creating labels for outstanding landscapes

So-called “agroforestry” systems are not an entirely new, but so far little noticed trend, in which agricultural production and tree cultures are brought together within multifunctionally managed systems. Culturally important agroforestry systems are found above all in Europe’s Mediterranean region, including savannah-like oak and cork oak forests.

It can be considered scientifically proven that these systems support biodiversity with their structure-rich landscape elements, and that their less intensive combination of multiple products makes them more resilient (check Tobias Plieninger’s article “Accelerating Sustainable Landscape Management through Agroforestry”). No matter if agroforestry systems are based on traditional practices or if they feature innovative approaches — they offer diversified income sources in rural areas, reducing people’s dependency on industrialised and monocultural systems.

Although these multifunctional production systems are more sustainable and more resilient than conventional agriculture, there is no pure agroforestry label to date. While the currently dominating food labels such as the organic label, fairtrade, or geographical indications mostly focus on single aspects, they are often missing to represent a landscape behind the product. In some regard, geographical indications might have the best potential to become landscape labels —but more on that later on. As for now, we have to acknowledge that existing labels fail in emphasising specific characteristics of agroforestry products and their respective landscapes.

Hardly any certificate is able to put the outstanding characteristics of agroforestry landscapes at the centre of marketing.

Acorn fed pigs in Extremadura — a source of high-quality and famous ‘Jamón Ibérico’. Often labelled for its quality and origin, but not for being produced in silvo-pastoral systems. Photo by Lukas Flinzberger

Indicators for sustainable development

For this reason, we interviewed more than 20 scientists and experts from the fields of agroforestry and labelling within a three-round Delphi study. Delphi — a method for finding consensus among experts — was beneficial because it allowed an anonymous exchange of opinions between the respondents. From three rounds of survey questions and intermediate feedback to the respondents, we filtered a common understanding of the potentials of labelling in agroforestry.

Source: https://sdgs.un.org/goals

We chose the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a starting point for formulating agroforestry-relevant sustainability aspects, as they are the most widely acknowledged targets for sustainability across disciplines. The experts were asked to assess which of the 17 SDG-based aspects they consider relevant for agroforestry systems and how these could be reflected by comprehensible indicators.

After identifying certain social-ecological sustainability aspects as most relevant in the context of agroforestry, we further asked for their practicability as indicators. That included the issues of monitoring efforts or costs, the feasability to assess an indicator, and the comprehensibility of its purpose to consumers. Overall, we found some core indicators which have the potential to communicate important aspects to consumers, and at the same time can be monitored by stakeholders or producers. From a set of 15 evaluated indicators, the authors recommend four in particular, which are characterised by good comprehensibility and applicability.

These indicators cover a broad sustainability spectrum in a comprehensible manner and are therefore proposed as
“umbrella indicators”:

• Salaries for employees
• No use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides
• Use of landscape-cultural elements for product marketing
• Areas for natural vegetation.

Coherence with other regulatory instruments was frequently mentioned by the experts as a crucial point for labelling agroforestry products, but it was not a central part of our study. We suggest to further investigate this compliance between a potential agroforestry label and the various agricultural policies, to guarantee sustainability in line with the UN goals.

Olives and especially olive oil are frequently labelled as ‘organic’, but the landscape aspect is often not part of olive oil certificates. Photo by Lukas Flinzberger

Searching for the most effective label

At the same time, an analysis was carried out to determine which types of certification appear to be particularly suitable in the agroforestry context. In expert circles a new label explicitly promoting landscape characteristics of agroforestry products was called for, but it could obviously suffer from the unfamiliarity of the term and the great diversity of different agroforestry systems. For example, cork-oak dominated silvo-pastoral systems are quite different from silvo-arable system for timber production, or harvesting tree crops. Thus, consumers might be confused if different products are marketed under the same ‘agroforestry’ label.

Silvo-pastoral systems of cork production (left — source: wikimedia, right — source: Lukas Flinzberger).

In contrast, a labelling approach based on geographical indications of origin was assessed as promising by several experts. Hence, the existing EU scheme for Geographical Indications could be a feasible starting point. Geographical Indications are not only defined by their geographical area.

Protected Designation of Origin [PDO]. Source: europe.eu

Especially for the strongest label — which is called ‘Protected Designation of Origin’ (PDO) — producers also need to define the product’s relation to the landscape of production, and traditional management practices. Already now, many PDO products have their origin in agroforestry systems (for example, Jamón Ibérico); taking up their agroforestry characteristics in marketing strategies of geographically protected products should be feasible.

On this basis, we recommend more in-depth research on the potential of combined agroforestry and geographical labelling.

Walking through old olive trees in 2018 during our excursion to Extremadura. Photo by Lukas Flinzberger

Currently, we are investigating the distribution of PDOs in Europe, and how they relate to social-ecological values at landscape level. Given the strong presence of geographical indications registered in Mediterranean countries, we assume that certain landscapes have a higher potential for producing renowned and high-quality products. Also, it seems plausible that cultural aspects like the food culture around the famous Mediterranean diet shaped the respective landscapes.

We are looking forward to reveal more detailed results on that later this year.

Full study: Flinzberger, L.; Zinngrebe, Y.; & Plieninger, T. (2020): Labelling in Mediterranean agroforestry landscapes: a Delphi study on relevant sustainability indicators. Sustainability Science 15, 1369–1382. URL: doi.org/10.1007[…]