Agroforestry systems provide multiple benefits for human wellbeing and biodiversity; however, their diversity and spatial distribution has sharply declined across Europe. This study focuses on agroforestry farms in Sweden. The aim of the study was to explore farmers’ motivations to start agroforestry, what benefits farmers attributed to their agroforestry farms and perceived challenges to practising agroforestry in Sweden. In total, 13 farms that practise various agroforestry forms were selected as case studies. A focus group, semi-structured interviews and field observations were used for data collection. We identified four types of agroforestry systems such as silvopasture, silvoarable, forest farming and forest gardens established on different land such as forested or agricultural land. All studied agroforestry farms were small but had complex spatial and temporal arrangements of crops, trees and animals, which were crucial to generating multiple benefits. Our results show that the multifunctionality of agroforestry systems resulted from farmers’ desire to design such systems. Farmers’ intentions to get foods and materials from their farms were always intentionally unified with multiple ecosystem services. We argue that agroforestry farmers are designers of multifunctional landscapes, as they deliberately organised their farming activities to get a bundle of ecosystem services belonging to all four categories—provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural. However, the complexity of agroforestry management, lack of technologies suitable for small-scale agroforestry farms, limited plant materials (including seedlings) and limited knowledge about how to do agroforestry challenged the scaling up of agroforestry practices.

农林业系统为人类福祉和生物多样性提供多重效益；然而，它们的多样性和空间分布在整个欧洲急剧下降。本研究重点关注瑞典的农林业农场。该研究的目的是探讨农民开始农林业的动机、农林业农场给农民带来的好处以及在瑞典实践农林业面临的挑战。总共选择了 13 个实行各种农林业形式的农场作为案例研究。采用焦点小组、半结构化访谈和实地观察来收集数据。我们确定了四种类型的农林业系统，例如森林牧场、森林耕作、森林耕作和建立在不同土地（如森林或农业用地）上的森林花园。所有研究的农林复合农场规模都很小，但农作物、树木和动物的时空排列复杂，这对于产生多重效益至关重要。我们的结果表明，农林业系统的多功能性源于农民设计此类系统的愿望。农民从农场获取食物和材料的意图总是有意地与多种生态系统服务相结合。我们认为，农林业农民是多功能景观的设计者，因为他们故意组织农业活动以获得属于所有四个类别（供应、调节、支持和文化）的一系列生态系统服务。然而，农林业管理的复杂性、缺乏适合小型农林业农场的技术、植物材料（包括幼苗）有限以及关于如何进行农林业的知识有限，对扩大农林业实践提出了挑战。