Agroforestry land use planing

 Role of Agroforestry on alternate land use planning

Modern commercial plantations of crops like rubber, coffee, and oil palm represent a well-managed, profitable, and environmentally stable land-use activity in the tropics. The scope for integrative practices involving plant associations is limited, except perhaps during the early phases of plantation establishment, because the commercial production of these crops has been developed with the single-commodity objective to such an extent that multi-use resource development in large-scale plantations is considered impractical. Diversified production strategies impede modernization and efficiency of traditional plantation management technologies. Thus, it seems that there is no rationale for diversified production in such plantation areas; nor has the technology for such possibilities been adequately developed to make such alternatives economically attractive.
On the other hand, the situation is quite different under smallholder1 farming conditions where the two major production functions,  land and capital, are limiting, and the farmer's objective is not maximization of a single commodity. In many such cases, especially in densely populated areas, farmers usually integrate annual crop and animal production with perennial crops, primarily to  meet their  food  requirements.  It is  for  these  innumerable smallholder areas that perennial-crop associations and integrated land-use practices are becoming increasingly important.
Contrary to popular belief, a substantial proportion of tropical plantation crops is grown by smallholders as reviewed by Ruthenberg (1980), Nair (1983), Watson (1983), and Nair (1989) (Figures 8.1 and 8.2). Most of the cacao production in Ghana and Nigeria, for example, comes from smallholdings. Cacao is usually grown in association with a specific crop, such as maize, cassava, banana, cucumber, and sweet potato, especially during the first four years after planting the cacao. The size of the holding varies widely from one