Social-ecological traps in agroforestry and the role of law

Agroforestry is an example of a social-ecological system that was once common across Europe, but has largely disappeared with the intensification of agriculture. Although agroforestry law has been shown to be an obstacle to the adoption of agroforestry by farmers, little is known about the implementation of agroforestry law at the local level and its interaction with other social-ecological feedback processes. In targeting this research gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with farmers, non-governmental organisations and administration in three case study regions across Germany. To understand the interaction of agroforestry law with other social-ecological feedback processes, we adopted the perspective of social-ecological traps (SET). We find that (1) agriculture in Germany is currently at a crossroad, where farmers are playing the role of pioneers and adopting agroforestry as a new farming practice to escape prevailing path-dependent processes. Moreover, we show that (2) agroforestry law is closely intertwined with other social-ecological feedback processes and plays a dual role in promoting and hindering agroforestry in the case study regions. Our study may inform the further revision of the European and national laws and highlights the need to take a holistic approach to the law.