Agrocology

Root2Fork is a European research and innovation project accelerating the transition to agroecology through multi-strata agroforestry systems — farming approaches that combine trees, shrubs, and crops in layered, biodiverse arrangements. Funded by the AGROECOLOGY Partnership under Horizon Europe, the project brings together universities, research institutes, and private-sector partners to make agroforestry a practical, scalable option for European farmers.
Root2Fork looks at the full value chain "from root to fork": from how agroforestry systems are designed and established on the ground, to how the food, fiber, and other outputs they generate move into markets and onto plates. The project combines scientific research with hands-on, farmer-centered tools — including participatory mapping of stakeholders and value chains, assessments of how ready farmers and regions are to adopt these systems, and analyses of circularity potential within local food and resource loops.
By linking ecological science with real farm conditions and market realities, Root2Fork aims to lower the barriers that have historically kept agroforestry a niche practice, and to generate evidence-based, adaptable pathways that help European agriculture become more resilient, biodiverse, and climate-positive — while remaining economically viable for the people who farm it.

The project is coordinated centrally by Prof. Dr. Farhah Assaad-Gerbert.

TUM Venture Labs is contributing by leading one work package in the field of innovation. This work package focuses on three connected innovation areas that help translate agroforestry science into real-world adoption:
 

• Stakeholder mapping — Systematically identifying and analyzing the actors relevant to a given agroforestry system or value chain (farmers, startups, NGOs, research institutes, gastronomy etc.), their interests, influence, and relationships to one another. This creates a clear picture of who needs to be involved, and how, for an agroforestry transition to succeed in a given region — surfacing both allies and potential points of friction early on.
• Farmer readiness scale — A structured assessment tool for understanding how prepared individual farmers or farming regions as well as innovative companies willing to enter practice are to prepare to successfully adopt agroforestry practices. This allows support and outreach to be tailored — rather than one-size-fits-all — and helps identify where the biggest barriers to adoption actually lie.
• Circularity assessment — Evaluating how well an agroforestry system closes resource loops: how byproducts can be reused within the farm or local economy, how nutrient and energy flows can be kept intact, and where value chains can be shortened or made more circular. This connects the ecological design of the system to its economic and environmental performance over time.

Together, these three tools give Root2Fork a practical, stakeholder-centered toolkit for accelerating agroforestry adoption — grounded not just in ecological science, but in the real social and economic conditions under which European farmers operate, with innovation at heart.

Agroecology is an approach to agriculture that applies ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of farming systems. Rather than relying primarily on external inputs (synthetic fertilizers, pesticides), it works with natural biological processes — nutrient cycling, pest–predator relationships, soil biology, plant diversity — to build productive systems that are more resilient, self-regulating, and lower-impact. Agroecology also has a strong social and economic dimension: it takes farmers' knowledge seriously, favors shorter and fairer value chains, and treats the farm as part of a wider social-ecological system rather than an isolated production unit. The EU's AGROECOLOGY Partnership frames it explicitly this way — as an approach that "builds on natural, biological interactions while using state-of-the-art science, technology and innovation based on farmers' knowledge," aimed at making agriculture more sustainable and resilient while keeping it a viable, attractive livelihood.

Agroforestry is one of the most concrete expressions of agroecology in practice. It refers to land-use systems that deliberately integrate trees or shrubs with crops and/or livestock on the same piece of land, rather than separating "forestry" and "agriculture" into distinct plots. This can take many forms — hedgerows and windbreaks, alley cropping, silvopasture, or the more complex systems Root2Fork focuses on: multi-strata agroforestry, where multiple vertical layers of vegetation (canopy trees, sub-canopy trees, shrubs, ground crops) occupy the same space simultaneously, each contributing different products (timber, fruit, fodder, food crops) and different ecological functions (shade, nitrogen fixing, erosion control, habitat). Well-designed multi-strata systems can improve soil health, increase carbon sequestration, diversify farm income, and buffer farms against climate extremes — but they also require more complex design, longer time horizons, and different market and knowledge structures than conventional monocultures, which is exactly where Root2Fork's work comes in.