In May 2025, the South West England Member Network hosted their annual spring event focusing on agroforestry and the North Devon Silvopasture Trials. Members were invited to Whiddon Down Village Hall in Devon to hear from the Woodland Trust and a Devon-based farmer before heading out to North Wyke Farm to visit one of their silvopasture trials.
Part one: agroforestry presentations
The first part of the afternoon was spent hearing from our guest speakers Ellen Smith and Andy Gray. Ellen Smith – Outreach Advisor, Woodland Trust – began by introducing us to the Woodland Trust’s “Trees for your Farm” project. Delivered through Sainsbury’s funding, the project is aimed at planting trees on farms to improve productivity and the environment. After defining agroforestry, “deliberate integration of trees into a farming system”, Ellen went on to list the multitude of benefits these systems provide before sharing details of three case studies across Somerset, Cornwall & Devon.
A common theme across all the case studies was the motivation to plant trees for shelter. Ellen shared with us a figure from the Optimal Shelterbelt® ‘OSB’ project, authors John Davis, Dr Lindsay Whistance and David Lewis, which is a particular design of shelterbelt that delivers 50% porosity. When the minimum shelterbelt length is 100m, the microclimate created from this can extend to x20 the height of the tall trees so that a 10m tall OSB should create acceptable shelter for 200m in its lee. Another memorable statistic described that providing shelter in fields can lead to up to 20% higher milk yields in dairy herds during temperatures above 23°C, likely because the shade helps cows stay cooler and avoid heat stress. This tied in well with Ellen’s earlier point about the need to build climate resilience into farming systems, especially as such high temperatures are expected to become increasingly common due to climate change.
Ellen concluded her presentation with a rather bleak outlook on the funding options for agroforestry systems this winter; the “Trees for your Farm” project is fully prescribed for the 2025/26 planting season and Countryside Stewardship and SFI funding is currently closed to new applications.
However, there is clearly a desire to integrate trees onto farms, as expressed by our next speaker Andy Gray – Farmer and Managing Director, MC Kelly. Andy farms livestock and cereals at Elston Farm in Devon and has established an alley planting system, strips of trees planted 14m apart, in one of his fields. When responding to questions about whether there is enough consideration given to the value of forest products, Andy tells us of his family’s history of cider making; he is fully aware of the benefits of turning a relatively low-value product like apples, into a high-value product, cider. He also spoke about his interest in becoming more self-reliant by growing his own timber for fence posts and producing biomass for woodchip. Beyond these traditional forest products, like timber and fruit, it’s important to highlight that we were also introduced to the benefits of using trees as fodder for livestock. For instance, hazel is a good source of condensed tannins, organic compounds that act as natural wormers. Unlike conventional worming treatments, these compounds don’t lead to resistance in parasites, making them a sustainable alternative.
Andy is keen to promote agroforestry systems and share lessons he’s learnt from establishing his own system with the wider farming community and is part of the Devon Silvopasture Network, which takes us onto the second part of the afternoon and the farm visit.
Part two: farm tour
Led by Mick Bracken – Outreach Advisor, Woodland Trust – we arrived at North Wyke Farm, one of the eight farms which make up the Devon Silvopasture Network, supported by Rothamsted Research, Organic Research Trust, FWAG, Soil Association and Woodland Trust. Teaming up through Innovative Farmers, each farm has planted one or more of three silvopasture systems: cluster planting, regular spacing (alley planting), and shelterbelt planting.
Dr Robert Dunn is a postdoctoral researcher at Rothamsted Research and has been involved with the establishment and monitoring of all three of these systems at North Wyke Farm. He first took us to look at the cluster planting, p.2021. It was the first time I’d seen complete livestock exclusion from a field rather than fencing out distinct areas for tree planting, but I could see the logic of selecting the least productive field for this purpose. The second stop was at the shelterbelt: a 200m long and 20m wide strip of trees dubbed the ‘living barn’. Although Ellen hastened to add that this term doesn’t mean the shelterbelt replaces barns for overwintering livestock, the tree species selection and planting design has been considered so that when livestock are reintroduced to the area, they’ll be able to use it for shelter and food, much like a barn. Interesting discussions followed centring around the future management of this shelterbelt and questions were asked regarding what year they plan to allow cattle back into the planted area. Rob and Mick explained how they don’t currently have an answer to this question as it’s part of the trial; they’re using an adaptive approach to assess when they believe the trees are large enough to withstand the grazing pressure of cattle and survive. They did conclude that it was likely to be when the trees reach a certain size or diameter, rather than a certain age.
We concluded our visit by looking at the regular spacing trial, which were rows of trees spaced 20m apart with tall tree species, such as oak, surrounded by thorns to act as a natural protection. Rob hopes livestock could be reintroduced to this field sooner than the other trailed systems because of this, and the ability to manage browsing more effectively through strip grazing.
The afternoon was a great success, and thanks go to the Woodland Trust, Dr Robert Dunn and Andy Gray for hosting and sharing their valuable time and knowledge with us.
Karen Batten – F&W Forestry
