Exploring the Agroforestry Adoption Gap: Financial and Socioeconomics of Litchi-Based Agroforestry by Smallholders in Rajshahi (Bangladesh) - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 227

Table 11.6 Mean land areas cultivated by the two types of farmers

Seasonal croppers (ha) Agroforesters (ha)

Total land area 0.53 0.57

Agricultural land 0.45 0.27

Agroforestry land 0 0.21

Other land (e.g. pond) 0.08 0.09

Table 11.7 Educational levels of the farmers (%)

Seasonal croppers Agroforesters

Never attended 20.0 15.0

Not completed primary school 22.5 15.0

Primary school 10.0 11.7

Secondary school 30.0 40.0

Higher schooling 17.5 18.3

Total 100 100

agroforestry due to hydraulic conditions amounted to only 27 percent of the total
area. In sum, the low adoption rate of agroforestry cannot have been caused by lack
of suitable land to any significant degree in this area. 3
Agroforestry and non-agroforestry farmers do not differ greatly in terms of gen-
eral educational level either, as shown in Table 11.7. The table also shows that
almost half of both groups have secondary education or higher. Lack of general
education cannot explain the very low adoption rates of agroforestry, therefore.
Closer to the factors mentioned by the farmers themselves, we might wonder if
a lack of specific agroforestry skills would be a constraint to agroforestry expan-
sion. This could be a candidate factor for non-agroforestry farmers indeed (see
Table 11.5), but much less so for the non-expansion of agroforestry by the farmers
who are agroforesters already. They already possess the necessary skills and, as
shown in Table 11.6, they still have some 60 percent of their land left for such
expansion. Moreover, agroforestry in home garden form had already been practiced
in the village and the region on a wide scale before the entry of the agroforestry
project that focused on the conversion of cropland into agroforestry; in general
terms, agroforestry is nothing new to the farmers.
The same would appear to hold for the constraint mentioned as 'lack of capital'
for the initial investment in agroforestry. For the non-agroforestry farmers this may
be true indeed. The agroforestry system has higher establishment cost financially
(see Table 11.2) and psychologically, since it is a break with established routines.
(The difference of financial cost is in fact higher than Table 11.2 suggests because
already established seasonal crop farmers use seeds from the previous year.) Again,

3 The situation appears to be the reverse here compared to other regions such as the drylands of
Africa where farmers may work much larger areas but agroforestry may be feasible only on the
very few spots with favorable water and soil conditions (Timmermans and De Groot, 2002).