Climate Change Mitigation - Climate Resilient Agriculture for Ensuring Food Security - page 307

Table 13.9 Costs and benefi ts under baseline and project
scenarios for the period 2006-2035 (Sudha et al. 2007 )
Baseline
scenario a

improvement and carbon sequestration can over-
come the yield depression, agro-forestry is not
likely to become widespread. In addition, most
farmers have the equipment to accommodate
only a few similar crops. Adapting to growing
both small stature and large stature tree crops
presents a greater challenge for them.
Takimoto et al. ( 2008 ) experimented with two
types of agro-forestry systems (live fence and
fodder bank) at the Segou region, Mali. The live
fence treatment showed US $96 net present value
(NPV), 1.53 benefi t-cost ratio (BCR), and
25.5 % internal rate of return (IRR), while fodder
bank project showed $159 NPV, 1.67 BCR, and
29.5 % IRR.
Promotion of agro-forestry can reduce the
amount of carbon emitted to the atmosphere
annually by 700,000 million tons. This can hap-
pen due to controlled grazing, fi re management,
use of fertilizers, improved cultivars, and reveg-
etation of reclaimed lands.
According to Rotenberg and Yakir ( 2010 ),
agro-forestry in semiarid regions can sequester
as much carbon as forests in temperate regions.
Every ton of carbon added to and stored in
plants or soils removes 3.6 t of CO 2 from the
atmosphere.
According to Lal et al. ( 1998a ), a small agro-
forestry enterprise following nutrient recapital-
ization had a cost of $87 per ton of carbon
sequestered in Eastern African Highlands. Sudha
et al. ( 2007 ) carried out a cost-benefi t analysis of
baseline (chilli crops - best alternative to agro-
forestry and the dominant preplantation crop)
and agro-forestry (Eucalyptus clones) scenarios
in the Khammam district, India. Costs and bene-
fi ts under both the scenarios can be seen in
Table 13.9 .

Project
scenario

Present value (PV)
of cost (US$/ha)

297 108

PV of benefi t (US$/ha) 423 235

Net present value (NPV)
of benefi t (US$/ha/year)

126 178

Benefi t-cost ratio 1.42 2.18
Note : Present value (PV) is the value on a given date of a
payment or series of payments made at other times, while
net present value (NPV) of a time series is defi ned as the
sum of the present values of the individual cash fl ows
(both incoming and outgoing) of the same entity
a The best alternative to plantations (chilli crop) has been
used for the baseline scenario

land cover can occur over the entire land area
(called “set-asides”) or in localized spots, such as
grassed waterways, fi eld margins, or shelterbelts.
The introduction image all the way at the top is a
small-scale illustration of a set-aside in which a
piece of land is no longer cultivated and allowed
to grow back to another land cover.
Land cover changes often increase carbon
storage. For instance, the conversion of arable
cropland to grassland typically results in the
increase of soil carbon due to lower soil distur-
bances and reduced carbon removal in harvested
products (IPCC 2007c ). Moreover, due to reduced
inputs by the farmer, grasslands may also have
reduced N 2 O emissions from lower nitrogen
inputs. Similarly, converting drained croplands
back to wetlands results in the rapid accumula-
tion of soil carbon. Planting trees can also reduce
emission. The IPCC ( 2007c ) concludes that
because land cover (or use) conversion comes at
the expense of lost agricultural productivity, it is
usually an option only on surplus agricultural
land or on croplands of marginal productivity.
GHG emissions from land-use change, includ-
ing deforestation in tropical areas, are around
17 % of total GHG emissions. In most countries
they are associated with agricultural activities
and exceed emissions from all other agricultural
sources. A recently published review of the litera-
ture quantifying the impact of land-use changes

13.1.8 Land-Use Change

According to the IPCC ( 2007c ), one of the most
effective methods of reducing emissions is often
to allow or encourage the reversion of cropland to
another land cover, typically one similar to the
native vegetation. Converting land to another