Growing ‘The Wood of The Gods’: Agarwood Production in Southeast Asia - Smallholder Tree Growing for Rural Development and Environmental Services - page 238

12.4 Wild and Cultivated Agarwood

For centuries agarwood has been harvested from natural forests. Usually Aquilaria
or Gyrinops trees were cut and people looked for infected wood inside the stem of
the tree. Highest quality agarwood can fetch as much as US$1,000 per kilograms.
The agarwood trade has been connected to an ever moving frontier across the forest
of Southeast Asia. Traders were continuously searching for untouched forests with
stands of Aquilaria trees. The trees were fetching high prices and as a result, the
news about agarwood harvesting spread like 'gold fever' among forest dwelling
communities. Large sums of money and all kinds of luxury items were offered to the
forest inhabitants in exchange for agarwood. In recent times this kind of 'agarwood
fever' has spread in a similar fashion into the forests of East Kalimantan, Papua New
Guinea, and Lao DPR. Interesting case studies have been written on this moving
frontier of agarwood harvesting and their effects on the economy of the local, forest
dwelling communities (see for instance Momberg et al. 2000; Wollenberg 2001,
2003; Zich and Compton 2001; NTFP Programme 2006). Usually this 'fever' was