tailieunhanh - Evaluation of agroforestry system under different marketing and institutional environments: A case of Chittagong hill tracts of Bangladesh

Marketing agroforest outputs is different from other agricultural commodities because of their diverse nature. Some products such as timber are often subject to government rules and regulations, which influence market conduct, performance and even structure. | Evaluation of Agroforestry System under Different Marketing and Institutional Environments A Case of Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh Golam Rasul and Gopal B. Thapa School of Environment Resources and Development Asian Institute of Technology PO Box 4 Klong Luang Pathumthani 12120 Thailand. 1 Introduction Ecological economic and social benefits of agroforestry are well documented Carson 1992 Sanchez 1996 Kang and Akinnifesi 2000 Neupane and Thapa 2000 . Because of its various positive contributions emphasis has been laid on promoting agroforestry as a viable land use in different parts of the world particularly in developing countries. A specialized research institute ICRAF has been created for comprehensive research and development of agroforestry. Several donors and NGOs have been providing support in the development and promotion of agroforestry. Despite great effort current adoption of agroforestry at the farm household level is much less than desired. Many success stories can be found but overall adoption of agroforestry by farm household is low and remains dependent largely on external support Raintree 1983 Neupane 2000 . A theoretical question therefore arises why have promising agroforestry practices in trials not been accepted by the majority of the farmers One of the main reasons for slow adoption of agroforestry is that little attention has been given to the marketing problems of agro-forestry products which deter farmers from large - scale adoption of agro-forestry practices Kjell 1992 Mala 1999 Vosti et al. 2003 . Conventionally agroforestry has been considered a subsistence activity to fulfill food fuelwood fodder and other subsistence requirements of households Neupane 2000 and previous research and promotion programs were targeted mainly on biophysical conditions such as biophysical suitability species suitability soil quality biological productivity and their technical solutions Franzel et al. 2001 Franzel and Scherr 2002 Neupane et al 2002 . .