Line of action:

Terrestrial ecosystems

Status:

En ejecución

Location:

Cuenca, Guadalajara, Huesca, Soria, Teruel and Zaragoza

Geographic scope:

España

Execution date:

2022

Duration:

15/07/2022 - 31/12/2025

Typology:

Sustainable forest management and harvesting

Total budget:

1,956,698.26 euros

Amount of aid from the Biodiversity Foundation:

1,858,863.35 euros (95%)

Coordinating entity:

Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT)

The agroforestry sector faces important challenges such as the abandonment of agricultural land, rural depopulation, advance desertification, loss of biodiversity and disappearance of pollinators due to climate change and intensive exploitation and monoculture practices.

The growing demand for essential oils and their molecules for industrial use is an incentive for the incorporation of new value chains in rural areas particularly affected by these challenges. The cultivation of aromatic and medicinal plants (PAM) and the use of forest remains aimed at obtaining essential oils and extracts offers a valuable tool to improve the competitiveness, viability and sustainability of low-yield farms, and the need to transform these products close to the origin would allow the generation of processing industry and new marketing channels around these farms. creating and fixing labor in these regions.

Despite the great diversity of tree species and PAMs in the territory, the development of the sector has focused on the collection of wild species and on another monoculture, lavandin, a sector that is not very professionalized, with a great lack of knowledge and lack of connection between the members of the value chain.

The agroforestry sector faces significant socio-economic and environmental challenges, such as the abandonment of agricultural land, rural depopulation, the advance of desertification and the loss of biodiversity due to climate change and monoculture. The project aims to face these challenges, through sustainable forest management that allows the use of pine and juniper pruning remains and the mixed cultivation of aromatic and medicinal plant species alone or in combination with traditional woody crops.

Project to promote sustainable forest management of native pine and juniper forests and the cultivation of native aromatic and medicinal plants (PAM) on marginal farmland and under tree cultivation, all in areas at high risk of depopulation, for the production of bioproducts with high added value. The management of tree stands and the cultivation and development of methods and technologies for the mechanization of PAMs, will allow the obtainment, characterization and determination of the potential use of bioproducts and by-products (essential oils, extracts, hydrolates, chipboard and organic absorbents). The environmental impact of these products will be evaluated in their value chain, and the results will also be transferred, which will include an analysis of the potential market of the products, a green entrepreneurship program, the design of a business model, an evaluation of the socioeconomic impact and the demographic challenge and a life cycle sustainability analysis.

The actions will be implemented on 90 ha of native pine and juniper forests and 24.5 ha of PAM crops, where it is expected to increase organic carbon in the topsoil, as well as reduce the risk of erosion by increasing the soil covered by vegetation, decreasing CO2eq emissions with the change of rainfed rye cultivation. It is also expected to reduce the probability of large fires in areas with forestry actions by 30%. It is expected to obtain 5 bioproducts, increase the annual gross margin of the substituted crops, and reach 270 attendees at conferences, workshops and training.