Vincent de Leijster

215 Summary the supply of many ecosystem services. Further, combining multiple agroecological practices may also improve synergies, and this is an aspect that deserves further research. Specifically, for almonds that could mean combining vegetation covers with compost application. In this thesis I have found strong evidence that agroecology is ‘the promised land’ in terms of ecological benefits. In addition, I have explored the road towards agroecology becoming a viable business, and this road may be bumpy, since gross revenues may be reduced during the process of implementation. However, despite lower net revenues in some cases, my findings also support that agroecological systems always remained profitable. Therefore, I conclude that agroecology is a ripe business and large-scale implementation is possible; yet, we need to learn and further innovate its application so that we can optimize synergies and minimize trade-offs between ecological and economic outcomes.