MODELLING AGRO·FORESTRY SYSTEMS FOR IMPROVED ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: A COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Despite promising ecological features of various agro-Iorestry systems, adoption or thesesystems by farmers is not always encouraging. This is not surprising. as fanners areoperating in a highly competitive commercial environment. where priority is given toeconomic goals rather than environmental goals. One solution is to develop AF modelswith species combinations that generate economic returns comparable to competingenterprises. simultaneously with environmental benefits.

The main objective of the current study is to investigate species combinations withimproved economic performance. Here two AF practices in Sri Lanka, namely, coconutinter cropping and avenue cropping based on Gliricidia were considered. lnformationgathered both from primary and secondary sources were used in the study. A number ofpotential crops were categorized according to their income generating and resourceutilisation patterns. Among them, there are perennials, semi perennials as well as seasonalcrops. Two AF models were developed using Linear Programming technique. Modelsproposed jak, banana, pepper and coffee as the inter cropping combination which gives thehighest economic performance under coconut based systems. In case of avenue croppingwith Gliricidia, number of legumes and cereals along with banana was selected as theoptimum combination. The economic performance of the developed models were assessedby cost-benefit analysis and their implications on a selected set of economic parametershave been discussed.

The whole exercise shows that, species combination of a system is an important aspectwhich determines the economic performance of the system. It further suggests that speciescombination can be manipulated to generate models with desired economic characteristics.Therefore, challenge ahead is to design models with species combinations that find ahalance between economic and environmental objectives.