The increasing need for forest resources and cultivated land requires a solution in forest management to realize sustainable land use. Smart agroforestry (SAF) is a set of agriculture and silviculture knowledge and practices that is aimed at not only increasing profits and resilience for farmers but also improving environmental parameters, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity enhancement, and soil and water conservation, while assuring sustainable landscape management. SAF, a solution for land management systems to reduce the rate of deforestation, is a smart effort to overcome the food crisis and mitigate climate change that is prospectively applied mainly in the social forestry area. Optimized forest land utilization could be achieved by implementing SAF and applying silvicultural and crop cultivation techniques to optimize productivity and meet sustainability and adaptability goals. This paper reviews the existing conditions, opportunities, and challenges in the mainstreaming of SAF in social forestry implementation to support the Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia. Mainstreaming SAF should include policy innovation and regulation implementation, the use of appropriate technology, and compromises or trade-offs among benefits, risks, and resources. SAF is a strategy to revive the rural economy and community prosperity through the optimal use of local resources as well as a form of smart landscape and land-use management that has significant roles in soil and water conservation, bioenergy, climate change responses, and enhanced biodiversity conservation.
This paper examines the relationship between farmers' socio-economic characteristics, silvicultural activity and the quality of their mahogany and kadam plantation stands in two independent case study villages in South Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. Data on farmers' socio-economic characteristics and silvicultural practices were collected and analysed by village using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney tests and Spearman correlations. Mahogany planters with larger areas planted carried out more silvicultural practices. Kadam planters who had joined the farmer's group earliest, had favourable or highly favourable attitudes towards tree planting, and whose households included more members gaining income were more active in silvicultural management. Approximately half of the studied mahogany and kadam plantations were of high quality. Most of the farmers conducted the recommended silvicultural practices, but just conducting them did not of itself cause the variation in the quality of stands. Pruning timing and recovery time after pruning, however, had an effect on the volume of potentially merchantable wood on medium quality mahogany sites. Further research is required on timing, frequency and methods used for the silviculture in order to improve the quality of stands. The policy implications drawn from this research include that farmers need to be provided with: (a) incentives to plant species with identified markets with reasonable price; (b) motivated extension officers; (c) improved access to production inputs; and (d) structures and mechanisms to assist them to organize and to develop activities, such as joint marketing.
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