From 22 to 26 June 2026, the SCALARE team took part in the 8th European Agroforestry Conference (EURAF 2026) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Held under the theme "Agroforestry at the Heart of Europe," the conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from across the continent for a week of keynotes, field excursions, and thematic sessions dedicated to advancing agroforestry.
Following an opening day of keynotes and welcome addresses, the second day of the conference was dedicated to field excursions. The SCALARE team spent a full day visiting four farms under the Agro4esterie project, each demonstrating how trees can be integrated into different agricultural and social settings. The visits began at La Branche Association in Mollie-Margot, a farm and social institution where 150 trees grow among more than 1,000 intercropped plants with strong volunteer involvement. The team then visited Le Domaine du Salagon, a diverse farm combining saffron, livestock, crops, and market gardening while applying the Keyline method for water and soil management, followed by Jean-Yves Billaud's farm in Orzens, home to an established 120-tree plot. The day concluded at the Domaine des Prés d'Areuse near Lake Neuchâtel, an organic farm producing potatoes, walnuts, and cold-pressed oils. On an especially warm day, the shade provided by the trees offered a tangible reminder that agroforestry does not only promise a better future, but is already making farming more resilient and liveable today.
The third day was dedicated to the scientific programme and opened with a keynote by Tobias Plieninger on expanding the multifunctionality of agroforestry at the landscape scale. This provided a fitting frame for one of SCALARE's own contributions. In Session S1.2, "Mapping Agroforestry Areas and Farms in Europe – Engaging Citizen Science," the team presented a machine learning framework for predicting areas where agroforestry can be economically and socially feasible. Identifying these feasible areas represents a key step toward scaling the multifunctional benefits of agroforestry across landscapes, building directly on the themes raised in the opening keynote.
On the same day, the team took part in a hands-on session on modelling the financial costs and benefits of agroforestry, using tools developed and tested under the DigitAF project. As SCALARE continues to develop its own agroforestry business models and prepares to conduct economic analyses using the Farm-SAFE and INTACT models, the session proved highly complementary to the project's work and offered a valuable opportunity to learn directly from the developers of these tools. The day concluded with a traditional Swiss raclette evening.
SCALARE's second contribution to the scientific programme took place earlier in the week, when the team presented a poster in Session S2.3, "Experiences and Lessons from Agroforestry Living Labs Across Europe," sharing its work on scaling agroforestry through Living Labs for resilient Mediterranean agro-ecosystems. Beyond the poster sessions, the week offered valuable exchange across the agroforestry community, with discussions among partners and peers working toward shared goals and new connections that will help carry the project's work forward.
EURAF 2026 concluded with two keynote addresses that placed the week's discussions in a broader perspective. Dr. Javed Rizvi reflected on fifty years of agroforestry across continents, while Chinwe Ifejika Speranza spoke about agroforestry as a pathway to transformative change. Both conveyed a shared message: agroforestry delivers its full potential when policy, practice, and people move forward together. The SCALARE team returns to Germany with new ideas, valuable connections, and renewed motivation to advance the project's mission of scaling agroforestry across Mediterranean landscapes.
