The role of agroforestry in farmers’ strategies and its contribution to the well-being of rural people in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Many countries have integrated agroforestry into their sustainable development policies, particularly in Southeast Asia. In Timor-Leste, the national strategy to promote agroforestry has adopted a modern, technique-oriented approach focused on crop rotation, intercropping and agro-silvo-pasture. In so doing, it has largely overlooked the pre-existence, diversity and performance of traditional agroforestry systems (AFS). The data collected in seven villages located in four districts of the eastern municipalities of Timor-Leste identified five common AFS: home garden, crop field and fallow, young agroforest, forest garden and silvopastoralism. The combined use of the customary AFS by rural households depends on the households’ ability to access the four types of capital (land, financial, labour and social) underpinning their development strategies. Four rural household archetypes were therefore distinguished. Six farming strategies used by these archetypes were identified: cattle specialisation, palm and tree product harvesting, crop intensification, diversification of off-farm and on-farm income, abandonment of farming, and survival. Each of these farming strategies combine certain customary AFS. The diversity and complexity of AFS require a better description of how they function and a better understanding of how they fit into the heterogeneous development strategies of rural households before actions are considered to improve their performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Farming system
• livelihoods
• basic necessities
• South east Asia

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the colleagues of the CIRAD-ASC team involved in this study (Sixtine Mazin, Adrien Péroches, Régis Peltier, Alain Rival) as well as the local enumerators (Jano Viegas, Paschir Valente, Americo Da Silva, Lucas Quintao Sarmento, Calisto da Costa, Juvencio Soares, Tiburcio A. Soares, Januario da Costa Amaral). We also received essential administrative support from the GIZ office in Dili to organise the travel to Timor-Leste during the complicated Covid era. A first English version of this paper was proofread by Grace Delobel. We finally want to thank all the people in the villages who hosted us and took the time to answer our (sometimes weird) questions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Partnership for Sustainable Agroforestry (PSAF) - Ai Ba Futuru project, that was implemented by the GIZ thanks to the European Union co-funds.