IMPACT OF HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC FACTORS ON INCOME AND SPECIES DIVERSITY OF KANDYAN HOMEGARDENS

Abstract

Being a highly popular agricultural land use with lot of promising ecological features,Kandyan Home Gardens (KHGs) have strong economic and social functional relationshipswith the occupants. Most homegardens have been developed out of long term efforts ofhousehold members which often extend to multiple generations. Wide variety andadaptation found in homegardens even within relatively small areas with approximatelysimilar agro climatic and physiographic conditions strongly indicate the high influence ofsocio economic factors on composition and structure of homegardens. Unless vital socioeconomic relationships involved with homegardens are properly understood, achievingbroad policy objectives could become a difficult task. Therefore this study attempts toinvestigate some of the socio economic relationships associated with KHGs.

Data collection has been done by conducting a survey in 3 villages in Kandy district usinga structured questionnaire. Information related to important physical features ofhomegardens and socio economic aspects of households have been gathered. Based on thegathered information two multiple regression models have been developed to elaborate onfactors influencing the income obtained from homegardens and number of species found inhomegardens.

Results show monetary income from the homegarden has shown statistically significantpositive relationships with size of land, capital used, family labour and number of species.This indicates that in households with high resource endowments homegardens tend to bemore commercially productive. Income from other sources has shown a negativerelationship with the income from homegardens. The second model shows someinteresting results which has important implications related to bio diversity of the system.Land extent, domestically used subsistent outputs and number of family members hasshown positive relationships with number of species found in the homegardens. Capitalused has shown a significant negative relationship. This indicates that as the resourcemanagement is shifted towards more capital intensive forms from subsistent forms it canlead to reduce the bio diversity of the system. This is a very important implication whichshould be considered seriously in any policy related to use as homegardens.

We can conclude that as homegarden management orients more towards intensive formsit has the potential to increase the income. However this could lead to deterioration of thespecies profile of the system. Therefore, the challenge for policy is to find a balancebetween ecological sustainability and economic viability of the system.