Exploring farmer perceptions of agroforestry via multi-objective optimisation: a test application in Eastern Panama
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Exploring farmer perceptions of agroforestry via multiobjective optimisation: a test application in Eastern Panama Elizabeth Gosling Carola Paul
. Esther Reith . Thomas Knoke
. Andre´s Gerique
.
Received: 6 August 2019 / Accepted: 18 June 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Understanding farmers’ perceptions of and preferences towards agroforestry is essential to identify systems with the greatest likelihood of adoption to inform successful rural development projects. In this study we offer a novel approach for evaluating agroforestry systems from the farmer perspective. The approach couples rapid rural appraisal and normative optimisation techniques to determine favourable land-use compositions for meeting various socio-economic and ecological goals, based on farmers’ empirical knowledge and preferences. We test our approach among smallholder farmers in
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-020-00519-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. E. Gosling (&) E. Reith T. Knoke Institute of Forest Management, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technische Universita¨t Mu¨nchen, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Gerique Department of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nu¨rnberg, Wetterkreuz 15, 91058 Erlangen, Germany C. Paul Department of Forest Economics and Sustainable Land Use Planning, University of Go¨ttingen, Bu¨sgenweg 1, 37077 Go¨ttingen, Germany
Eastern Panama, obtaining data from household interviews and using hierarchical cluster analysis to identify farm groups with similar land-use and income characteristics. We found that moderate differences in farmers’ perceptions between these groups altered the type and share of agroforestry included in the optimised land-use portfolios that balance the achievement of 10 pre-selected socio-economic and ecological objectives. Such differences provide valuable information about potential acceptability of agroforestry within each group. For example, we found that farmers who derive most of their farm income from crops may be more willing to adopt silvopasture, whereas farmers who are more economically dependent on cattle may benefit from diversifying their landuse with alley cropping. We discuss the potential of this modelling approach for participatory land-use planning, especially when dealing with small sample sizes and uncertainty in datasets. Keywords Alley cropping Hierarchical cluster analysis Land allocation Participatory rural appraisal Robust optimisation Silvopasture
Introduction Agroforestry has clear potential to enhance ecosystem services within agricultural landscapes of tropical
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regions (Jose 2009). However, like any agricultural innovation, farmers will only integrate trees into their farming systems if they perceive agroforestry to align with their objectives and available resources
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