Titre
Hybrid improved tree fallows : harnessing invasive legumes for agroforestry
Type
article
Institution
Externe
Périodique
Auteur(s)
Tassin, J.
Auteure/Auteur
Rangan, H.
Auteure/Auteur
Kull Ch. A.,
Auteure/Auteur
Liens vers les personnes
ISSN
0167-4366
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2012
Volume
84
Numéro
3
Première page
417
Dernière page/numéro d’article
428
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Langue
anglais
Résumé
For several decades, agroforestry specialists have promoted the planting of fallow fields with nitrogen-fixing, fast-growing trees or shrubs to accelerate soil rehabilitation and provide secondary products like woodfuel. Yet, such 'improved fallows' have not been widely adopted, in part due to the costs of labour and seedlings. In some situations, however, farmers have developed novel approaches to agroforestry fallows by taking advantage of spontaneous invasions of woody leguminous tree species present in the vicinity of their fields. In this paper, we examine cases from Réunion, highland Madagascar, the Bateke plateau in Congo, and the Palni hills of southern India where farmers have adapted their cultivation practices to take advantage of the invasive characteristics of Australian acacias that were introduced earlier for other reasons. We focus on the key social, economic, and environmental factors that influence farmers in these places to gain opportunistic benefit from these introduced tree species that biologists have been deemed invasive and damaging to local ecosystems and biodiversity. We conclude that opportunistic fallowing of invasives can be viewed as a hybrid strategy combining elements of natural fallows and improved fallows-which we call 'hybrid improved fallows'-in that it takes advantage of the 'weedy' characteristics of introduced leguminous tree species in the landscape and offers a cost-effective and pragmatic strategy for soil and vegetation management for farmers.
PID Serval
serval:BIB_50E72ACFDF69
Date de création
2015-03-11T15:58:29.550Z
Date de création dans IRIS
2025-05-20T16:11:50Z
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Nom
BIB_50E72ACFDF69.P001.pdf
Version du manuscrit
preprint
Taille
3.03 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
PID Serval
serval:BIB_50E72ACFDF69.P001
Somme de contrôle
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