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Beyond the project cycle: a medium-term evaluation of agroforestry adoption and diffusion in a south Indian village

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Abstract

Few studies explicitly assess the temporal and spatial dynamics of agroforestry adoption occurring beyond the project cycle. Where ex-post evaluations are published, abandonment of introduced agroforestry after project cessation is often reported. This paper presents an analysis of agroforestry adoption in a poor, peri-urban village in semi-arid south India, where 97 % of initial adopters had retained their plots six to eight years after implementation. The intervention was facilitated by BAIF, an Indian non-governmental organisation specialising in natural resource management. The complex technological package promoted was known as ‘wadi’ and comprised fruit trees planted in crop fields, with a boundary of multi-purpose trees and integrated soil and water conservation measures. Sixty four agroforestry plots belonging to 43 households were surveyed in 2010/11 and interviews were held with both adopting and non-adopting farmers. Beyond retention, a quarter of adopters had expanded the practice on to additional areas of land and some diffusion to initially non-adopting farmers had also occurred. Adopters were found to have modified the practice to suit their own objectives, capabilities and constraints, highlighting that adoption is more than a simple binary choice. The study demonstrates the importance of external support for adoption of agroforestry. The intervention was not, however, especially pro-poor with adoption occurring disproportionately among relatively wealthier households with larger landholdings. Where poorer households adopted, this tended to occur later. Participation was entirely voluntary and, by 2011, conversion of suitable farmland to agroforestry had reached 18 %; while beneficial to individual adopters, this patchy coverage arguably limits the potential for enhanced ecosystem service provision at landscape-scale.

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Notes

  1. Union Government of India (various ministries and departments); State Governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan; National Bank of Agriculture Rural Development (NABARD); Council for the Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (CAPART); various philanthropic trusts.

  2. The European Union; German Development Bank—KfW Bankengruppe.

  3. See: https://www.nabard.org/pdf/TDF_Projects_Status_as_on_Dec_2014.pdf.

  4. Trench-cum-bunds are constructed across the slopes of the plot and along field boundaries. Trenches are dug and the excavated soil is used to construct a bund along the lower side of the trench.

Abbreviations

BAIF:

BAIF Development Research Foundation

DFID:

Department for International Development (UK)

GPS:

Global positioning system

KML:

Keyhole markup language

MPT:

Multi-purpose tree

NABARD:

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (India)

NGO:

Non-governmental organisation

NRM:

Natural resource management

NRSP:

Natural Resources Systems Programme

PUI:

Peri-urban interface

SWC:

Soil and water conservation

TDF:

Tribal Development Fund

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge funding from the UK Department of International Development (DFID), Natural Resources Systems Programme, project R8084. The views presented here, however, do not necessarily reflect those of DFID. Thanks go to the Tropical Agricultural Association (TAA) whose financial support allowed the first author to conduct two months of fieldwork in the summer of 2010 and to BAIF for their willingness to host the research and facilitate logistical arrangements. The authors are also grateful to Dr Sangeetha Purushothaman for her valuable inputs, to Meera Halkatti, R.B. Hiremath and Y.N. Somangouda for their help in data collection, and to the anonymous reviewers for their perceptive comments.

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Brockington, J.D., Harris, I.M. & Brook, R.M. Beyond the project cycle: a medium-term evaluation of agroforestry adoption and diffusion in a south Indian village. Agroforest Syst 90, 489–508 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-015-9872-0

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