Agroforestry is a new term for an old practice of resource management which includes the planting of trees and agricultural crops on the same piece of land, either simultaneously or sequentially. In Senegal, this new approach has been praised, mainly because it came along at a time when private participation in reforestation was badly needed. Since the early 1980s, the Snegalese government has been devoting money and personnel to the implementation of agroforestry projects, particularly in the Groundnut Basin. In spite of these efforts, small private farmers response to the suggested agroforestry systems has been slow in most parts of the region.
Assuming that financial return is the most viable mean for triggering large-scale adoption of agroforestry by private farmers, this study analyzes the financial attractiveness of the three agroforestry systems promoted in the Groundnut Basin, and compares them to the base case of growing groundnuts alone. The three agroforestry systems are: kad and millet, cashew and groundnuts, and a Eucalyptus block plantation. For each system, costs and benefits accruing to the farmer are identified and estimated. The financial attractiveness of each system is measured using two criteria: present net worth (PNW) and internal rate of return (IRR).
Using the criterion that a system with a PNW greater than zero is acceptable, the results indicate that all three agroforestry systems are acceptable at 10 and 15 percent discount rates. The kad and millet system is acceptable at rates nearing 50 percent. This is due mainly to the valuation of the crop loss avoided in the presence of kad trees. When this component was not internalized, the IRR was found at only 15.8 percent. The cashew and groundnut system has the next highest IRR at 25.6 percent, followed by The Eucalyptus block plantation at 18.8 percent. The base case yields negative PNW at all three discount rates, and an IRR equal to 4. 7 percent. This low return from the groundnut enterprise may be due to the valuation of family labor which does not generally constitute an out-of-pocket cost.
Some environmental benefits attributable to agroforestry systems and some socio-economic constraints that may be part of the farmers' reluctance to adopt the new systems are discussed. Finally, some recommendations are made to help improve the current approach to private involvement in reforestation. It is suggested that, in order to anticipate the loss in interest that follows most incentive programs once the incentives stop, the "cost sharing" program and other financial incentive programs should be limited to systems, which have strong favorable impacts on the environment but do not afford sufficient financial rewards by themselves for wide scale adoption. / M.S.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/110173 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Diallo, Alioune |
| Contributors | Forestry |
| Publisher | Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | xii, 116 leaves, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 26033574 |
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