Contributions of Agroforestry on Socio-economic Conditions of Farmers in Central Punjab, Pakistan – A Case Study

Abstract

Agroforerstry (AF) in the farmlands of Punjab (Pakistan) is a tradition, but it was practiced without any proper methodology. From last few years, AF practices have become popular in Punjab. Especially in the rural areas woody biomass is being used as a major source of energy. The study was designed to examine the contributions of AF on the socio-economic conditions of the farmers in the central Punjab of Pakistan. District Chiniot was selected as the universe of study and a detailed survey was conducted in the three tehsiles by interviewing 150 randomly selected farmers with the use of a wellstructured questionnaire. In addition, secondary data was also collected from district agriculture offices. Chi-Square test was used for quantitative data analysis. Results showed that farmer’s annual income and household status was improved after practicing AF. Reasonably less poor farmers have more income increase than the poor farmers due to an extra investment, but income generation helped poor farmers to maintain the minimal living standards. Farmers perceived the advantage of trees immensely and the large scale farmers taking this as a genuine source of income. In adoption of AF, attitude of the farmers was independent of family size and settlement period, but was dependent on the occupation and number of livestock holding. The study suggested that, in the present financial scenario of the poor farmers, planting of suitable tree species with multiple benefits is an escape way to come out of the vicious circle of poverty. Along with that agroforestry can play a vital role in increasing the vegetation cover in forest deficient countries. Extension services and awareness programs should be arranged in the areas where people have negative attitude about AF practices, because the cultivated fields are the best places to grow the tree with crops. Moreover, subsidies and income generating project should be launched to motivate people towards AF.

Clusterization of Agroforestry Farmers using K-Means Cluster Algorithm and Elbow Method

“…Family dependents can be related to the welfare of agroforestry farmers. The number of family dependents is closely associated with family income and expenses (Farooq et al 2018;Jha et al 2021;Nuryati et al 2019;Pujiono et al 2021). The increasing number of family dependents will increase family expenses, so farmers must consider every change in their farming to minimize risk as a form of accountability to the family (Baker 2018).…”

Agroforestry for healthy ecosystems: constraints, improvement strategies and extension in Pakistan

“…Therefore, a successful agriculture policy is critical to national economic growth and poverty reduction (Ministry of Finance 2007). The average household in rural areas is composed of six residents, with two earners per household (PBS 2016;Population Census 2017;Farooq et al 2018), and thus a dependency ratio of 3:1. In addition, household incomes are much lower in rural areas than in urban areas.…”

“…Historically, farmers often retained trees on their farms to sustain agricultural production, reduce soil erosion, retain water and provide shade, and generate income. Most commonly trees found on the farmlands in the Province of Punjab (Farooq et al 2018) are presented in Table 1. In recent decades, greater attention and importance have been given to these systems following the implementation of donor-funded projects and growing awareness of the benefits from such systems driven by governmental institutions.…”

“…In many cases, there will be an overall societal benefit for the government to provide initial subsidies or grants to promote agroforestry and increase the market opportunities for tree products from farmland (Anwar et al 2017;Jamilu et al 2014;Rasul and Hussain 2015;Farooq et al 2018). In some cases, addressing land tenure or the facilitation of working relations between landowners and tenants will be important (Anwar et al 2017).…”

Smallholder Farmers’ Perception on Ecological Impacts of Agroforestry: Evidence from Northern Irrigated Plain, Pakistan

“…Most of the farmers in study area are small holder farmers having a lower yield of wheat and rice because of poor management practices. Hence they are planting trees on cropland to increase production to improve their livelihood [19] and viewed it as environmentally friendly [20]. Trees in AF systems impact their surrounding environment and their impact doesn't be only a positive one.…”