Domesticating forests: how farmers manage forest resources

This book concentrates on the cultivation of forests on farmlands by smallholder farmers, not only because the practice constitutes altogether the most original and lesser known aspect of local forest management in the region, but also because, in our opinion, it represents the most promising field for the design of alternative strategies for the management of forest resources and forest lands. Since the 1970s, the importance of indigenous communities’ utilisation of forest resources in tropical countries and the relevance of local management systems for forest science, conservation and development have become well-recognized facts. Studies on local forest management have multiplied. Few of them, however, recognize the significance of the difference between ‘natural forest management’ and forest culture. If farmers in South-east Asia are often cited as skilled forest managers, it is barely acknowledged that an essential part of this forest management does not concern natural forests, but forests that have been planted on farmlands after the removal of pre-existing natural forests. Why do people cut natural forests to replant the same kind of trees they have just chopped down This book gives many elements of the answer to this question. Conclusions from 10 years of analysis of forests cultivated by smallholder farmers on farmlands do show that the management of self-established forest resources in natural forests and forest culture should not be confused any longer. Despite obvious biological and ecological similarities between cultivated forests and natural forests, their historical, socio-cultural, institutional and economic foundations as well as their social and political dimensi ons are totally different, if not divergent. Beyond the various examples given in this book, the underlying strategy of forest culture on farmlands bears a universal dimension, which justifies its separation from the common domain of ‘natural forest management’. This separation is not only conceptual, but bears important practical as well as social, legal and political dimensions, as we will try to illustrate here. Most examples of forest culture on farmlands given in this book are derived from Indonesia. This happenstance is more a consequence of the historical development of the research projects from which the book is derived—in particular the importance of FORRESASIA and former Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) research on such systems in Indonesia and the concentration of our Philippine study on critical examples of forest extraction by remote forest communities—than a reflection of any inexistence of such systems outside of Indonesia. The Lofoten Workshop has shown that other forms of cultivated forests exist in other parts of the world. The International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) is presently documenting examples of traditional and modern forest culture from Thailand and the Philippines. These cultivated forests are not home gardens. They usually form large blocks of several tens of thousands of hectares extending between open farmlands and natural forests. In Indonesia, they cover altogether an estimated 6 million to 8 million hectares. They are not, as commonly reported in most professional forestry circles, anecdotal components of backwards, traditional agriculture. Most of them assume a determining role in the farm economy, both through the provision of regular cash flow from traded commodities and for their risk-buffering function. They also constitute a major element of smallholder agriculture at the scale of the country. In Indonesia, they provide 80% of the processed and exported rubber latex, 80% of the dipterocarp resin and 95% of the benzoin resin traded in and outside the country, between 60% and 75% of the main tree spices (clove, cinnamon, nutmeg) produced for national and international markets, roughly 95% of the various fruits and nuts marketed in the country, as well as a significant part of bamboos, small cane rattan, fuel wood, handicraft material and medicinal plants traded or used in the country.

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