Agroforestry practices by smallholders in Sandakan, Sabah
Agroforestry is emerging as an important land use system in Malaysia. It has both protective and productive functions and proven to be technically feasible and economically viable. Therefore, it has been made as one of the strategic action plan of the Third National Agriculture Policy (NAPS). Be...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2005
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/18691/1/Agroforestry%20practices%20by%20smallholders.pdf https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/18691/ |
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| Summary: | Agroforestry is emerging as an important land use system in Malaysia. It
has both protective and productive functions and proven to be technically
feasible and economically viable. Therefore, it has been made as one of
the strategic action plan of the Third National Agriculture Policy (NAPS).
Besides, in the Second Sabah Agricultural Policy (SAP2), agroforestly was
emphasized with the objective of further optimize land use and maximize
returns especially in areas where soils are marginal for agriculture. In
addition, smallholders are one of the potential users of agroforestry
systems. However, the scientific data on smallholders' agroforestry
systems in Sabah is still lacking. Therefore, this study is carried out to
investigate agroforestry practices by smallholders in Sandakan, Sabah.
The study focuses on smallholders' involvement in practicing
agroforestry; the type of agroforestry systems and its component; input
of workers, fertilizers, and machineries; marketing of its products, and
smallholders' perceptions and evaluations about agroforestry. Data were
collected through questionnaire survey by face-to-face surveys. There
were 58 respondents from 26 kampungs involved in this study. The study
showed that 91.496 of smallholders were currently practising
agroforestry. However, 77.6% of them did not understand about
agroforestry. There were six types of agroforestry systems found in their
farms. The systems were agrosilvicultural, agrisilvicultural,
agrosilvopastoral, aqua-agrosilvicultural, silvopastoral, and aqua agrisilvicultural.
The most common agroforestry systems practised by
smallholders were agrosilvicultural. The components of smallholders'
agroforestry systems were main crops, supplementary crops, tree
species, animals, and fish ponds. It was found that input of workers and
machineries were very low. Besides, the marketing channels of
smallholders' agroforestry products, other than oil palm fruits, were found
to be unorganized and limited. In addition, 82.8% of them agreed that
agroforestry can provide a variety of products and services as well as
offered more income. However, 93.1% of them strongly agreed that the
lack of successful demonstration models of agroforestry practices is the
main potential obstacle in agroforestry development. Besides, 82.8% of
them strongly agreed that the second potential obstacle was that lack of
experience and expertise in agroforestry. Due to various problems and
obstacles, their agroforestry systems were appearing unorganized in
terms of selection of agroforestry components, planting arrangement,
and combinations between the components |
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