Agroforestry for Sustainability: Demonstration of Agro-forestry on Mountain Slopes in Baguio City and Benguet Province, Philippines

Dorothy Hamada

To encourage farmers to adopt agroforestry as an alternative to vegetable and/or flower monoculture on sloping mountain terrain.

None

This is an advocacy by example project. Wide-scale and intensive vegetable and/or flower mono-culture has replaced forests in sloping areas of the mountains of Benguet. This type of farming is the biggest (77%) source of annual soil erosion in the province (DENR 2013). The loss of the forest has also negatively affected the water-holding/retention capacity of the soil, its fertility, as well as its texture. The replacement of soil fertility by the use of chemical fertilizers alone is very costly. The negative effects of continuous vegetable/flower farming and continuing expansion at the expense of further deforestation has prompted the government to issue a total ban on logging ; its considering to withdraw tax declarations and fraudulent land titles as well as evict farmers within forest reserves, watersheds, and steep mountain slopes. The project aims to introduce agroforestry as an alternative to vegetable/flower monoculture. Coffee, tea, fruit trees and shrubs could act as an alley, windbreak as well as food producing trees.

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