Last week, I attended another great Farm Forestry event. This one was a forest bioenergy demonstration organised by Teagasc, the Forest Service, Irish Wood Producers and the Waterford Institute of Technology School of Forestry. As always the organisation was excellent with much to be learned by the large and diverse congregation of agroforesters who attended.

Some readers may be unaware of the quiet revolution that has occurred in Irish agroforestry in recent decades. Agroforestry is a land use that integrates tree growing and farming under the same management, on the same holding. Up until the 1980's, tree growing was seen as the exclusive activity of the state while farmers were only about crop and animal production. The two mind-sets, and managements, eyed each other suspiciously, sometimes antagonistically, across the barbed wire fences and valleys that separated them. The depth of feeling on the farming side was deep, cultivated by centuries of struggle to carve out fields from once dense forests; the defeat of farmers forced to give up their stony town-lands for forestry; and the alien regimented landscapes of dark invading conifers that was state forestry in the past.

Then, in the nineteen eighties, the farm forestry premiums for broadleaf trees were introduced. What first tentatively emerged, and has now taken root in many parishes up and down the country, is the formation of a new cohort of farmer foresters - agroforesters. Men, women and families who plant and tend areas of broadleaf and conifer trees on their holdings.

What at first presented as a financially attractive scheme to draw forestry premium income from out-of-the-way bits of ground and wet areas has now formed much deeper roots. At these events I meet many who are full of questions but I almost never meet a farmer who regrets having planted. The majority say that they are delighted to have trees on their farms, that it has changed their farming, and that they regret not doing it sooner.

My own walk in the woods started long before I ever planted a tree. I had always felt attracted to well wooded fields and farmlands. However, a deep respect for farming culture made me sensitive to the negative perceptions outlined above. Then later, as the Celtic tiger turned the best of farmland into motorways and building sites, old attitudes got shaken up and altered.

Finally, twelve years ago, I commenced to plan out a new vision for my place that included forming blocks of mainly broadleaf trees to frame and shelter all the blocks of farmland.

As the trees have grown and rooted, their presence has totally changed all the other lives on the place. A previously cold windswept farm is becoming a warm oasis for the people, stock and plants that live here. I believe the inter-connectedness of woodland and grassland will continue to throw up new opportunities to enhance both into the future.

Research in other countries shows that with the correct balance of trees, animals and grass, a farm can produce up to 30% more. For a 100-acre farm, that's like buying another 30 acres right beside you, only better and cheaper. That's a prize worth going after, and it's called agroforestry.