Farmer influence on shade tree diversity in rustic plots of Coffea canephora in Panama coffee-agroforestry
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Farmer influence on shade tree diversity in rustic plots of Coffea canephora in Panama coffee-agroforestry Natsuho Fujisawa
. David W. Roubik . Makoto Inoue
Received: 16 April 2020 / Accepted: 20 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Coffee-agroforestry includes biodiversity conservation in tropical regions. The least economically valuable yet widely cultivated ‘‘robusta’’ coffee was studied in Panama, considering management practices and tree diversity. Fifty households were interviewed and a detailed tree census was conducted in 29 coffee plots owned by 13 households. Besides C. canephora there were 638 stems of 90 species in 41 plant families. Coffee plantings B 10 years of age had higher tree diversity. With different degrees of management and original forest conditions, the coffeeagroforestry landscape was not uniform. Local vegetation was partly conserved. Farmers did not focus directly on productivity but instead emphasized flexible use and management, with moderate labor input, under changing socio-economic circumstances. Such rustic management, with attitudes and actions not governed by immediate monetary benefit, influenced biodiversity and rural life.
N. Fujisawa (&) The Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan e-mail: [email protected] D. W. Roubik Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama M. Inoue Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Tokorozawa, Japan
Keywords Biodiversity Smallholder coffee plots Rustic management Rural livelihood Shade trees
Introduction Biodiversity conservation is a major challenge in tropical regions. Species richness in agricultural landscapes is viewed as a conservation factor (Jarvis et al. 2007). However, rural development in Latin America long ago adapted to the local environment by following farming methods and knowledge of local people (Altieri and Nicholls 2017) and in some areas, agriculture is associated with forest, in some form (Redford and Padoch 1992; Pokorny and De Jong 2015). Those landscapes have a relatively high level of agro-biodiversity (Jarvis et al. 2007; Altieri and Nicholls 2017) compared with conventional (monoculture) agriculture. Not surprisingly, monocultures virtually eliminate natural diversity, and success in a small scale may promote monoculture expansion. Here our central question focuses on the management and preferences of small farmers. We studied which mechanisms are in place, and their consequences. Agriculture that includes biodiversity is termed ‘‘agroforestry’’ if crops and trees are grown together. Interest in environmental conservation since the 1990s led coffee-agroforestry to gain attention (Perfecto et al. 1996; Calvo and Blake 1998). Although
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Agroforest Syst
introduced as an academic concept in the 1970s (Nair 1993), coffee grown under a tall tree or shade tree is not new (Jha et al. 2014). The component tree species vary. Small-scale farmers often use whichever forest trees or other plants (li
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