Structural and cultural constraints on adopting tsabo-based agroforestry as an alternative to tavy around Betampona Reserve, Madagascar

Abstract

Madagascar is known worldwide for its exceptional biodiversity. However, slash-and-burn cultivation (tavy) accounts for 80 to 95% of deforestation in this country. Despite decades of efforts to promote tsabo-based agroforestry as a sustainable alternative, the tavy agricultural technique has converted 50% of the original surface area of the Betampona Strict Nature Reserve (about 1,200 ha) in eastern Madagascar into cropland or secondary forests. Applying an interdisciplinary approach with an integrated theoretical framework, this study attempts to capture the constraints on the adoption and extension of tsabo-based agroforestry as an alternative to tavy on smallholder farms in the buffer zone around this protected area. Although tsabo-based agroforestry provides up to 67.6% of their cash income from farming, 20% to 43% of the households sampled no longer wish to establish new tsabo-based agroforestry plots or to extend their existing ones; 40.6% and 62.7% of households have continued the practices of monoculture and tavy, respectively. This article concludes that the factors impeding the establishment or extension of tsabo-based cultivation in the study area include structural as well as cultural dimensions. On the one hand, worsening geographic isolation, rural insecurity and poverty, together with the complete breakdown of marketing channels for their agricultural products, are discouraging farmers from extending their tsabo plots. On the other hand, even though rice is part of the Malagasy identity and governs all aspects of village culture, projects for tsabo extension have failed to integrate rice within the agroforestry systems they propose to farmers. It is recommended that policymakers and development programs take these structural and cultural factors into account in order to design agroforestry systems that correspond to the producers’ needs.