Dr. Áine Ní Dhubháin:

A cohort of farmers have made that decision and they can be the champions for other farmers. If they have a positive story to tell or if they can show that planting has enabled them to stay in farming where they otherwise might not have done so, that build-up of numbers can encourage others to get involved. There is a lot of interest now in a different approach to farm forestry because it means the farm, the forest and the two not integrated. There is a lot of interest now and research beginning to ramp up into having these two together. It might be better referred to as agroforestry or silver pasture systems where the farmer can continue to farm. I am well aware that farmers want to be farmers and produce food. If that was possible along with planting trees, albeit less densely, that might be something farmers might find more acceptable but we do not have enough examples of that yet. Approximately 51 ha of such mixtures of trees and grassland have been introduced in the past year or so under the agroforestry grant scheme introduced by the Department. The fact that a farmer does not have to give up on farming and can do the two together might be more attractive.