Which Socio-economic Conditions Drive the Selection of Agroforestry at the Forest Frontier?

Abstract

Models are essential to assess the socio-economic credentials of new agroforestry systems. In this study, we showcase robust optimisation as a tool to evaluate agroforestry’s potential to meet farmers’ multiple goals. Our modelling approach has three parts. First, we use a discrete land-use model to evaluate two agroforestry systems (alley cropping and silvopasture) and conventional land uses against five socio-economic objectives, focusing on the forest frontier in eastern Panama. Next, we couple the land-use model with robust optimisation, to determine the mix of land uses (farm portfolio) that minimises trade-offs between the five objectives. Here we consider uncertainty to simulate the land-use decisions of a risk-averse farmer. Finally, we assess how the type and amount of agroforestry included in the optimal land-use portfolio changes under different environmental, socio-economic and political scenarios, to explore the conditions that may make agroforestry more attractive for farmers. We identify silvopasture as a promising land use for meeting farmers’ goals, especially for farms with less productive soils. The additional labour demand compared to conventional pasture, however, may prove an important barrier to adoption for farms facing acute labour shortages. The selection of agroforestry responded strongly to changes in investment costs and timber prices, suggesting that cost-sharing arrangements and tax incentives could be effective strategies to enhance adoption. We found alley cropping to be less compatible with farmers’ risk aversion, but this agroforestry system may still be a desirable complement to the land-use portfolio, especially for farmers who are more profit-oriented and tolerant of risk.

The Influence of Discounting Ecosystem Services in Robust Multi-Objective Optimization – an Application to a Forestry-Avocado Land-Use Portfolio

“…A public planner's optimization of land-use allocations on farm level could include both farmers' private and social interests (Gosling et al, 2021;Reith et al, 2020) and consider the growing demand for multifunctional management on scarce land. We therefore set our example of a public planner in a country where limited availability of productive land generates a high interest in optimized land utilization.…”

“…The decision variables refer to the proportion (0-100%) of the total area allocated to each land use; the sum of all the shares must equal 100%. Based on the decision-maker's preferences and level of uncertainty tolerance, the model optimizes the land-use type composition to offer the best compromise (Gosling et al, 2021). The resulting land-use allocation improves achievement levels for all indicators by balancing the relevant decision criteria.…”

An Overview and Future Outlook of Indonesian Agroforestry: a Bibliographic and Literature Review

“…The development of agroforestry science was also affected by farmer behaviour to choose agroforestry system or commodities. Farmer attitude to respond the possible risks affected the choice of agroforestry practice [64].…”

Transitioning to silvopastoral forestry. Testing the common drivers of farmer adoption in the Colombian Amazon

“…found that the roles that women hold in Latin American cattle ranching operations are often discounted; therefore, their contributions to various aspects of cattle management, such as milking, albeit signi cant, are often overlooked. This pattern has resulted in the relatively lower adoption rates among women observed in the literature.Access to markets have been found to be important(Pattanayak et al, 2003;Gil et al., 2015; Bettles et al, 2021; de Souza Filho et al, 2021;Gosling et al, 2021) and access to main and secondary roads act as a proxy for this market access. Improving market access by building roads would likely be an effective way to encourage SPS adoption.…”

“…However, road development is a well-known driver of deforestation in the Amazon and internationally, therefore this approach more likely lead to adverse impacts on forest ecosystems(Barber et al, 2014;Murillo-Sandoval et al, 2020). Perhaps a more important limiter of market access is the lack of local markets resulting from the low population density observed in forest frontier areas, such as Caquetá, that results from the low labour demands of the extensive traditional ranching that dominates these regions(Sloan, 2008;Gosling et al, 2021). SPS can support sustainable and pro table livelihoods in the Colombian Amazon(Taou et al, 2022) therefore, if the other barriers to SPS are dismantled to the point where adoption becomes widespread, the concentration of people seeking SPS-based livelihoods would contribute to increasing population density and the subsequent revitalisation of local markets Bettles et al (2021).…”