Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Afforesting and re-establishing vegetation cover over such lands poses many spe-
cial problems. Growth of plants is slow and they are at risk of damage by animals.
Biotic pressure on the wastelands and commons is so great that despite fencing,
plantations are often destroyed by animals. In many cases, this may have more to do
with institutional arrangements and non-cooperating local communities, but it cer-
tainly has proved to be the most serious threat to the efforts made so far in arid-zone
afforestation. Moisture constraint means that extensive soil and water conserva-
tion measures need to be meticulously planned and executed. Often these measures
are costly, although they do have the advantage of generating the much wanted
employment for the local communities.
Afforestation in arid areas poses many other problems along with institutional
inadequacies. Large tracts of land in arid and semiarid areas suffer from salinity
and alkalinity. In many places, soils are mobile sand dunes making it impossible for
plants to establish without special treatment. Extensive uplands are often left with
only rocky and skeletal soils with inadequate depth for sustaining tree cover. Large
areas have suffered severe gully erosion resulting in formation of ravines which are
not only intractable by virtue of their topography but also problematic because of
infertile soils, calcareous crusts, and poor moisture infiltration and retention. All
these problems mean that afforestation programmes in arid and semiarid areas must
be planned and executed with great care. The various activities in an afforestation
programme, taken together, constitute a complex task indeed, with each step linked
to the succeeding step and determining its success or failure. Far too often, the result
of shoddy and careless execution of afforestation programmes is that a large amount
of public funds go down the drain.
1.10
Costs in Afforestation
Social and economic costs involved in afforestation programmes are small compared
to the benefits even though financial returns in most cases appear to be modest. The
opportunity cost of the capital invested is more than made up by the employment
generated for the rural poor. Social spending is an important part of national budgets
of most developing countries, and there seems to be no better way of achieving
this than by harnessing the productive energies of the people by engaging them in
afforestation programmes with the long-term goal of rebuilding natural resource base
while meeting the basic needs of the rural populations.
The financial burden of afforestation programmes can be calculated using model
schemes of afforestation based on the broad types of land and the necessary technical
packages (see Chap. 7). Depending upon the type of land, number of trees to be
planted per hectare, and the choice of species, the unit afforestation cost may range
from 200 to 450 mdeq (man-day equivalent) per hectare. It is seen that the fence
is the most costly item in such works, which in case of linear plantations, such as
shelterbelts and roadside avenues, can lead to very high costs up to 900 mdeq per
hectare. Given this, it is imperative that low-cost methods of afforestation be evolved.
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