multipurpose tree species research for small farms: strategies ... - part

small-scale charcoal manufacturing. Trees
selected for the project include Eucal)ptus
camaldulensis and Lcucaena leucocephala,with
Calliandracalothyrsus and Eucalyptus deghpta
planted for beekeeping.
According to an FAO study of the project,
the farmers' response "was lukewarm at first for
several reasons. As there was no critical shortage
of fuelwood in the area, there was little perceived
need to plant trees for this purpose. In addition,
people felt it wonld not benefit them to plant trees,
for in their experience it was illegal to fell trees in a
reserved forest area. The very concept of
agroforestry was alien to these maize farmers who
felt that planting trees in their fields would
interfere with tractor plowing."
But as the project was implemented over the
years, it was found that "56 percent of the farmers
had established hedgerows around their homelots
and 51 percent started to plant non-fruit trees.
However, only three percent had at any time
participated in establishing or managing village
woodlots."
Charcoal production was initiated by installing
a beehive kiln to demonstrate improved charcoal
production technology. It appeared to motivate
few farmers to install kilns of their own.
The most product vc activity of the project was
the introduction of pasture grasses to provide
fodd" for cattle. A study showed that compared
with the insignificant cattle raising at the start of
the project, it had become " a rather important
activity.., herds of 40-50 head were not unusual if
not yet very common."
Fruit treeswere readily accepted ad vere
producing income for the farmers who had
received the grafting materials in the earlier phase
of the project.
Beekeeping was an introduced innovation.
Interested farmers were trained in basic
techniques. A small-scale local industry
developed, producing beekeeping boxes and
frames, new bee colonies, and honey. Theby
fm roduction was so successful that the participating
Farmers expressed interest in marketing the honey
on a wider scale.
These instances of tree-related activities indicate
that the adoption of tree based innovations are
likely to be successful when ihe activity generates
an income. The aim should focus more on income
generation, as in the example of the honeybees,
than on the wood produced from woodlots.
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The project also illustrates the futility of
implementing community-blased projects which
do not attract the participation of tie villagers
in the area. One reason for this may be hat the
forest village communities are new settlements
created by the project and do not have the
Lommunity spirit found in older, more
established villages. The villagers in the project
area did not face the same fuclwood constraints
as in other villages. Hence the lack of
involvement in the community ,voodlot idea.
In conclusion, the factors that seem to be
important in determining the adoptioti of
innovations involving trees in small farm systems
include:
- a clear demonstration of prolitabilitv o
the adopter, particularly in terms of cash
gains, relative to other income earning
opportunities;
- availability of technical support to help
with problems in the early stages of
adoption;
- the innovation may be individually focused
or community based, depending on the status
of the particular resource: and
- trce-bascd innovations should be consideced
for adoption using the same criteria as for
other agricultural innovations.
A Logit Framework for Anal)zing
Farmers' Responses to MPTS
(;ivcn the importance of individual responses
in the adoption process,
analyze
it is
the
useful
likely
to be able to
outcome of an extension
program in order t:) t;iilor the program to meet
the farmers' needs. A statistical model is
proposed for this purpose.
The Logit Model
The Iogit model is an instrument for
st gitsmodlli an instme fo
individuals. The distinct advantage of this
dependent
model is that variable it allows is discrete, an analysis either where yes the or no,
deedn and not the vaibei-icee relative magnitude of ihryso the response. o
The use of this analytical technique is well
knoki in bioassay, and was adopted in the late
1970s to study economic behavior in ,uch fields
as urban transportation and in the analysis of
the labor market.