Abstract
This paper investigates the types of agroforestry system that exist in Gunung Salak Valley, West Java, Indonesia in order to characterize the differences in their basic structure and associated crop plant diversity. Data were collected through rapid rural appraisal, field observation and focus groups, followed by household survey of a sample of 20 agroforestry farmers. Five main agroforestry systems (homegardens, fruit tree system, timber tree system, mixed fruit–timber system, and cropping in the forest understory) exist in the study area, and all of them exhibit a noticeable diversity in terms of both species composition and utilization. Products from farming accounted for an average 24 % of household income. They comprised agroforestry products which contributed IDR 3.25 million/year and other agricultural products contributing IDR 1.66 million/year. The observed agroforestry systems include not only a form of forest dominated by ‘cultivated trees’, but also an anthropogenic vegetation formation derived from agricultural antecedents. In land-use classifications agroforestry systems are not recognized as forestry, but like forests they provide tree products and services. Classification will always be disfunctional if a binary system is applied, thus a more sophisticated approach should be adopted that incorporates the economic and environmental characteristics of a wider range of systems.
Highlights
The important and historic relationship of local people and forests is widely reported
This paper investigates the types of agroforestry system that exist in Gunung Salak Valley, West Java, Indonesia in order to characterize the differences in their basic structure and associated crop plant diversity
This paper investigates the types of agroforestry system that exist in the Gunung Salak Valley, West Java, and the basic structural differences between them
Summary
The important and historic relationship of local people and forests is widely reported. The romanticism that external observers often associate with indigenous forest people is strong (Bahuchet et al 2001), the image of nomadic bands of a few individuals living in harmony with nature. Tropical rainforests have often been perceived as ‘virgin nature’ and described as largely uninhabited, with only scattered groups of forest people (Michon 2005). As is the case elsewhere in the tropics, in Southeast Asia, at present the vast majority of forested landscapes are inhabited by large groups of smallholder farmers, practicing some form of farming (Peng et al 2014). Several ethnobotanists consider the process of plant domestication and farming to have followed two divergent models (Michon 2005): (1) The ager model, an agricultural practice in open fields, (2) the hortus model, cultivation of crops in ‘gardens’. Examples include: the repong dammar resin producing system of Krui, Lampung; the tembawang (fruit and timber) system of West Kalimantan; the parak system (tree gardens on the slopes between the villages and forest) in Maninjau, West Sumatra; and dudukuhan systems of West Java (de Foresta et al 2000; Mizuno et al 2013; Manurung et al 2008)
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