Mr. Andrew St. Ledger:

Some 60% of the suite of measures available for member states to select under the RDP are concerned with sustainable forest management of agroforestry and the type of forestry model we should be pursuing. We have chosen to pick from the 40% of measures that are strongly agricultural. Funding is available within the RDP. In our design of the next RDP we could incorporate more of those measures. One problem is that I believe only 80% of funding is available towards forestry under the RDP. Most European states get their forest funding under the RDP. We have chosen not to; we are funding forestry using public funding. Under EU rules. only 80% of a grant can be paid and the forest service here is claiming that without a 100% grant there would be no uptake whatsoever. There must be a solution to that, perhaps by making up to 20% or so. We are missing out on a huge suite of measures.

Linked to food security and the increased population, the World Agroforestry Centre report from 2009 proposes how integrating forests and farming can help with sequestration. We are inclined to forget that trees are a huge source of food globally. Fruit, nuts, coffee, chocolate and tea all come from trees. Food does not just come from crops. We need to consider the integration of agroforestry.