Vincent de Leijster

148 Chapter 7 conducted in the same region that investigated intercropping of almonds and thyme (Figure 7-1a; Durán Zuazo et al., 2008). The effectiveness of compensating potential yield losses with the production of other products depends on the following aspects: the economic value lost from the main crop, the value that can be generated by the alternative crop, and the accessibility to intermediaries that market the other crops (Terreaux & Chavet, 2004). In the first two aspects, economic value comprises quantity and price. The price of almonds has been relatively high, as can be seen from Figure 1-5; therefore, relatively small losses in yield translate into larger losses in economic value. This makes it more challenging to compensate the losses with other crops that have lower market values. For the coffee case study (Figure 7-1b), we found that coffee yields were lower in agroforestry systems than in monoculture systems. The agroforestry farms also produced fruit and timber, but only around 30% of their value was marketed, while the other 70% was not brought to market and therefore did not provide monetary revenue. If all the products had been marketed, then the total gross economic returns would have been comparable for monoculture and agroforestry systems. Historical agricultural specialization makes it more difficult for farmers to market all the products they produce, since the supply chain is specialized in just a few crops that are produced most dominantly in the landscape. It is therefore more difficult to find intermediary traders who are willing to buy low quantities of alternative commodities, or these alternative commodities can only be sold at lower prices, which is also evident from our data (Morel et al., 2020). We compared the prices that coffee farmers received for the bananas, oranges and avocados they sold, and we found that the farm-gate prices were 125% lower than national average farm-gate prices for these products (FAOSTAT, 2020). The farmers’ decision making on farming options and strategies also depends on the external context (Morel et al., 2020). Market price is one of these external factors, and it may be influenced by the quality of the product (Hernandez-Aguilera et al., 2018). In both our case studies we found that some agroecological interventions improved the quality of the main commodity, because compost improved almond kernel size and shade improved the physical characteristics of the coffee bean. This is in line with other studies that demonstrated that shaded coffee farms provide higher quality coffee (Muschler, 2001; Vaast et al., 2006b), compost application improves olive oil quality (Chehab et al., 2019), and cover crops in vineyards improve wine quality (Xi et al., 2011). Agroecological management may therefore be facilitated by the specialty market (Hernandez-Aguilera et al., 2018). External parties may also give price premiums for the delivery of services. An example is certification schemes (Verburg et al., 2019), which is one of the economic incentives discussed in the introduction. Other than price premiums, greening subsidies and