Swiss farmers don’t adopt agroforestry because they fear for their reputation

Agricultural policy in Europe is moving towards greater support of multifunctional agriculture, such as agroforestry systems. However, modern farmers appear to be resisting this change. Trees in agricultural landscapes have been declining, despite increasing direct payments for their ecosystem services. To understand the drivers of farmer behaviour in Switzerland with regard to practicing agroforestry, we interviewed 50 farmers using a semi-quantitative and open ended questionnaire. In terms of potential motivations for adoption of agroforestry, most farmers gave highest scores to habitat ecosystem services, both for livestock and wildlife. Low scores were given to productivity, profitability and ecological direct payments. Farmers resisting adoption concluded that practising agroforestry would not have a positive impact on their reputation. They also attributed significantly lower scores to perceived behavioural control. We conclude that payments for ecosystem services will be unlikely to change farmers’ behaviour, as long as their expectations and knowledge are not appropriately addressed. Transdisciplinary co-production of agro-ecological knowledge could help to change their attitude.