AN ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF THE SUSTAINABILITY OF TRADITIONAL AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF KANDYAN FOREST GARDENS

Abstract

A feature of the Sri Lanka Forestry Sector Alaster Plan of 1995 is the promotionol conservation-oriented methods or forest management. In this contextagroforestry systems such as Kandyan forest gardens (KFCi.\) are important, since they are not only productive and relieve pressure on the naturalforests,but also conserve a rich collection of biodiversity. Although national policyseeks to promote agroforestry ill order to achieve nationally desirableobjectives. the successful adoption or this policy depends on the degree ofcongruence between different national objectives, the multiple objectives offarmers, and changing socio-economic conditions. The objective of this study was to make an economic assessment of KFCrs, front the point of vieH' ()/ theindividualfarmers who operate under changing and varied economic objectives.Data were collected by a field survey. using a structured questionnaire. Tabularanalvtical techniques were then used to describe important features of !'FCrs.The major technique used to find out how the structure ofhome gardens changeswith changing economic objectives was linear programming analysis by thejIIOT4. [) model. The results ofthe SIU(~V indicate that even under the conditionthat a farmer 's main objective is tv maximize the net present value (}lPI), homegardens can still be an important source of timber, because (?f their largecomponent 0/ multipurpose trees, which include species such as jak andcoconut. 717C binding constraint of the model is land; sensitivity analysis showedthat with an increase in the land area of KFGs, both the number of species andthe income increase.