Agroforestry, the deliberate combination of woody plants and agriculture, is one of the measures to protect the environment and the climate. The European Union uses Agro-Environmental Indicators (AEI) to assess the success of these measures and its environmental policy. If agro-ecological elements such as agroforestry are to be recognised as valuable by practitioners and policy makers, and if their development is to be monitored, they need to be visible at the level of the AEI. We have therefore identified categories of indicators from five legal frameworks (EU 8th Environment Action Programme, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Carbon Removals Framework, Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive, Nature Restoration Law) that are relevant to the assessment of the impact of agroforestry. Twelve impact indicators have been identified as most relevant for farm-scale monitoring of their impact.At present, however, each country, legal framework or sector uses its own indicators, and while some data is collected at local level, it is often only reported as aggregated data at Member State level. This prevents local decision-makers or practitioners from using the informatin. As part of the DigitAF project, a HorizonEurope project on digital tools for agroforestry, we selected a DigitAF farm as a case study and evaluated the current situation of how agroforestry is reflected (or not reflected) in the AEI. Based on the rather negative results, we outline possibilities for better representation in the AEI using existing environmental databases, but also identify bottlenecks in data availability and resolution. Finally, we make several recommendations for improving data collection and provision, e.g. at the LPIS level. The benefits of agroforestry can only be communicated if they can be 'seen' at local level and in practice. In other words, if we want to use the AEI as reporting tool, we need to provide data at field or farm level. This would allow policy makers and practitioners to use it, and thus show the best way to quantify the impact of newly introduced agroforestry.
