Homegarden Agroforestry as a Tool for Sustainable Production Unit in Ethiopia

Abstract

Homegarden is the chief center of production unit in Ethiopia, particularly for the poor smallholder families. Homegarden is an area of land in the household’s compounds and its surrounding’s where different annual crops, livestock’s and trees integrated and produced. In the rural part of Ethiopia, homegarden agroforestry has a paramount importance since ancient time. It has been providing different useful products and services to millions of rural households. On the top of these benefits, little attention was given to homegarden agroforestry rather than giving due attention on how to make it more productive unit of land. This review paper was initiated to draw attention of scholars and policy makers through elucidating the production potential and ecological importance of homegarden agroforestry (HGA). HGA encompasses multiple components (tree, crop, livestock’s and etc), and intensive management practice with multistory production system based on the good will of the land user’s, knowledge and skills. HGA provides different goods to the household families’ including food/fruit, fuelwood, fodder, timber and other tree products. It also functions as in-situ conservation of biodiversity. Therefore, inclusion of appropriate multipurpose tree and shrub species is recommended to maximize the production potential of this unit of land. Keywords: Multiple products, production and productivity, Livelihood mechanisms DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/67-02 Publication date: July 31 st 2020