The Role of Forestry in Sustainable Agriculture
The purpose of this note is to outline the scope of the proposed study with a view to using its results as an integral part of a holistic attempt towards sustainable agriculture. It does not attempt to accomodate the threats to forestry posed by natural and man-made disasters, over population, etc.
In this discussion, I would like to expand the meaning of the term agriculture not only to include the cultivation of traditional food crops and fodder, and animal husbandry but also fostering animal and plant life as a source of useful products. Fostering as used here, may include active measures undertaken for their enhancement, but also refraining from actions that may threaten their qualitative and quantitative bio-diversity in situ.
Moreover, I shall use the term forest to mean a collection of flora and fauna occupying a given area possessing a set of distinct attributes. Thus, it may include marshlands and mangroves, scrub bush country, as well as rain forest. My reason for this extended definition is that every habitat contributes in some way to make possible the existence of the equilibrium between the living and the mineral resources they need to live.
I think it would be reasonable to begin by distinguishing between the two logically distinct ways in which forests are involved in agriculture. We may call the first its contribution to sustainability , and the second, its participatory contribution to agriculture in the sense given above.
Forests contribute not only to the sustainability of agriculture, but also to the very possibility of our engaging in it. The follwing is a non-exhaustive list of their contributions:
1. Participation in the Nitrogen cycle
2. Participation in the Carbon cycle
3. Prevention of top-soil erosion
4. Ensuring the accessibility of water to living things by facilitating its absorpsion into the ground
5. Local temperature regulation through transpiration and reduction of the amount of solar heat absorbed by the ground
6. Serving as a wind-break to more vulnerable growths, animals, and man
Forests' participatory contribution to agriculture is also well-known. In addition to timber, fruits and nuts, gums, etc., it may harbour game that could be an adjunctive source of protein in some locations. However, in many areas of the world, yields of such products have nearly disappeared owing to radical exploitation of this resource.
For instance, families living in the Amazon basin were once engaged earned a part of their livelihood by collecting Brazil nuts for export. Deforestation has now reduced this activity to insignificance.
In West Africa, cutting down the rubber wine to harvest the product has made it extinct in many areas where it once grew. Likewise, Guanaco and Rhea, once the most important sources of protein to the natives of Patagonia are now very scarce.
So, the very possibility of our engaging in agriculture, and the possibility of our obtaining some 'natural products', depends on the continued existence of forrests having certain logically distinct attributes, viz., their qualitative and quantative bio-diversity.
The possibility of having this bio-diversity depends on having a certain minimal area of habitat at the disposition of a given forest, for its existence depends on the equilibrium between the mineral resources required by its living members, and the qualitative and quantitative equilibrium among them. The qualitative here represents the number of diverse species, while quantitative is concerned with the size of their individual populations in a habitat.
Naturally, the location and the climate of a habitat predetermines the attributes of those equilibria; for instance, muddy areas of brackish water favour the growth of mangroves, while 'bush' thrives on arid uplands of the South African Veld.
* This opens for us the first necessary area of study, viz., a careful ecological survey of the existing forests, those under threat, and perhaps, most important, the ecology of those destroyed froests, which now lie fallow, or are barren lands. The purpose of it is twofold; first, to ensure the continued existence of the present forests, retaining their bio-diversity, and secondly, to restore the bio-diversity of our threatened forests, and to reforest as many now destroyed forests as possible.
In order to achieve these objectives some additional studies are required. before, we continue, it is very important to remember that ecologic surveys must consult the local inhabitants, especially older people, who would recall the types of flora that no longer exists in the threatened and destroyed forests.
Reintroduction of species into threatened forests and to now barren areas requires the follwing obvious studies:
1. Possibility of establishing seed/sapling banks of species that have disappeared from a threatened forest or a barren area.
2. Sequence of their viable reintroduction with respect to the local species. It is not recommended that rapid growing foreign species are introduced for the sake of short term results, for this violates the critical equilibria mentioned above.
3. Ascertaining the conditions that would enable one to undertake the sequential reintroduction of forest species to a given area. These may include finding out the possible means of rain harvesting and water storage in situ, establishment of wind breaks, or it may even require short-term irrigation. It may also embrace mechanical adjuncts such as terracing the now barren hillsides with more or less permanant structures.
4. Means of reintroduction of the local fauna required for the existence of a forest. These may range from insects involved in pollination, degradation of dead vegetable matter, dispersal of seeds, etc.
5. How to monitor the bio-diversity of a given forest, and how to maintain it.
6. What constitutes rational harvesting of a given forest, and who are entitled to do so.
7. How to secure the inter-sectorial expertise needed to achieve this?
8. How to finance this endeavour?
9. How to secure the political will needed to get this study off the ground?
10. How best to involve local people, and get them to play an active role here?
Even though I have deprecated the introduction of 'rapidly growing' foreign species as a means of reforestation, I do not exclude promoting the natural transformation of forests. For instance, one can observe this process in how the West African mangroves are slowly transformed from soft wooded to hard wood forests as time passes and the mangroves extend out into the sea. The crucial point is that the species involved here, are local.
As this note is more in the form of a summary of already established knowledge, I shall conclude with the hope that it would be of some use.
Lal Manavado.
Lal Manvado