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Tree crop diversification becomes a common component of farmers strategies to diversify their sources of income, to deal with price fluctuation and also to adapt to a changing environment. This study examined farmers activity in tree-crop diversification and factors that encourage rural households in tree planting. A combination of household interviews and participatory field surveys was conducted to collect primary data. Data was analyzed descriptively and quantitatively. The results show that farmers mainly engaged in planting trees with agroforestry system, even there were also some people who develop trees with monocultures system. The tree species most developed in the research area are Magnolia champaca, Azadirachta excelsa, and Anthocephalus cadamba. The diversification decisions of communities depends on age, education level, the number of family members, expenses, and assets. Farmers who have wider landholdings and relatively have high incomes will be more interested in doing tree crop diversification on their land. Of the households surveyed, the respondents have the main job as a farmer in which the average age was 50 years old and the majority had education level up to elementary school and junior high school. The average expense of the respondents was 1.437 million rupiah per month in which the average of land holding is 2.68 hectares. In southern Sumatra, farmers try to mix some tree-crop in their land in order to increase their income, to get cash income in different time (maintaining food security), and reduce some risks because the changes of environment, market and policy. Therefore, this practice can provide economic resilience for farm households.

Smallholder farmers in the forest-savanna transition zone of mid-Ghana have historically relied on food crop cultivation for their livelihoods. However, cashew production is rapidly gaining prominence due to a combination of climatic and non-climatic factors. This shift raises concerns about competition for resources between cashew and food crops, as dedicating productive land and inputs to tree crops that do not directly contribute to food supplies could jeopardize long-term household food security and sovereignty. To explore these dynamics, this study investigated the effects of cashew cultivation on farmers' incomes, household food security, and food sovereignty in the Jaman North District, a leading cashew-producing area in mid-Ghana. Using surveys of 60 farmers and 26 key informant interviews, the study found that cashew farming has become a crucial strategy for income diversification and climate change adaptation. Significantly more male farmers cultivate more of their lands to cashew than females. Currently, 66% of farmers allocate approximately half of their land to cashew cultivation, with 83% intending to expand this allocation. While cashew income enables farmers to purchase food, low market prices and poor harvests can significantly reduce household income, negatively affecting food purchases and other essential needs. Furthermore, the growing dominance of cashew farming has displaced traditional food crops, altered local ecosystems, and forced previously self-sufficient households to rely on unstable cashew incomes. The findings highlight the urgent need for policy interventions to promote the concurrent cultivation of cashew and food crops. Such measures would help safeguard both food security and sovereignty in rural Ghana, offering a model for similar regions facing the challenges of balancing cash crop expansion with sustainable food production.

This paper investigates the influence of using indigenous forecasts (IF) and scientific forecasts (SF) on arable farmers’ adaptation methods in the Rwenzori region, Western Uganda. Despite the dissemination of scientific forecasts (SF) from national meteorological systems, arable farmers in rural areas are still very vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change. Using mixed methods approach, the study adopted random and stratified sampling in the selection of 580 arable farmers to investigate the problem under this study. Data were collected using a household survey and focus group discussions, and the multivariate probit model was used in the analysis. The findings indicated that use of IF only positively influenced crop diversification, soil and water conservation. Using both SF and IF positively influenced livestock diversification. Use of either IF only or both SF and IF positively influenced tree-planting and tree crop production as an adaptive strategy. The study recommends that although forecasts are important drivers of adaptation, other factors could also help efforts to enhance climate-change adaptation, such as improving land rights through more recognition of formal customary rights and land tenure and capacity building of farmer-to-farmer networks with climate-change information. Increasing the spread of weather stations in the different agro-ecological zones by national governments and development partners would improve the predictive accuracy and local specificity of scientific forecasts, resulting in improved climate-change adaptation.

Despite the importance of crop diversification in enhancing household income and food security, significant knowledge gaps remain in terms of the precursors and actual impacts of diversified food-cash crop systems. Thus, we assessed the determinants of food-cash crop diversification, and its impacts on the income and food security of farmers using survey data from 408 randomly-selected households in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana. The study employs the multinomial logistic model (MNL) to examine farm households’ decision to practice food-cash crop diversification, while the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) was performed to determine the impact of the diversification on food security and household income. Diversification of cash and food crops impacted positively on household annual crop income and on food security, and these positive impacts further increased as the diversity of tree cash cropping increased, with the addition of cocoa and/or cashew. Our findings emphasise the importance of income from tree cash crops, and complementarities between cash crops and food crop production in explaining the food security merits of diversified food-cash crop systems. Overall, a food-crop-farmers’ decision to diversify into cocoa and cashew in Ghana was significantly predicted by farming experience of the household head, and farm characteristics of the household (fallow land availability, land ownership and livestock ownership), as well as economic (annual crop income and access to off-farm income) and institutional (access to extension) factors. These results imply that enhancing farmers’ access to financial and technical support services and promoting livestock farming could encourage the adoption of diversified cropping systems. However, since land ownership rights in sub-Saharan Africa are oftentimes unclear, contested or poorly enforced, pro-poor and equitable land tenure reforms would be indispensable in promoting diversification into tree cash crops by subsistence farm households.

Site selection analysis is a fundamental methodology for the regeneration of Xylella fastidiosa subsp. pauca ( Xfp ) infected areas, with the introduction of Xfp immune/resistant tree crop species. The diffusion of these species could be assessed by combining ecological optima data, climate and soil attributes of the study area, and GIS tools. The study aimed to evaluate the potential suitability of eight Xfp immune tree crops, including Neglected and Underutilized Species (NUS) drought-resistant and new species, as follows: carob, hawthorn, prickly pear, mulberry, loquat, walnut, persimmon, and avocado. The use of GIS tools allowed the integration of different layers, such as climate and soil, to contribute to the identification of suitable areas for the cultivation of these tree crops helping the policy-makers to define plans for land use at a regional scale. Following the ecological optima, which represents the ideal environmental conditions for each species, this analysis provided valuable insights into the compatibility of the selected tree crops with the prevailing environmental factors in the affected area. Carob revealed its remarkable adaptability and drought resistance, presenting the broadest suitability. Hawthorn and Loquat also exhibited high adaptability, indicating their potential contribution to agricultural diversification and ecological balance. Conversely, crops like Avocado, Prickly pear, and Walnut, despite their economic value, demonstrated limited adaptability due to their specific soil and climate requirements. These findings can potentially contribute to the development of strategies for the policy-makers, aimed at diversifying and enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems, facing the problem of emerging quarantine pathogens and the incoming climate change, and highlighting the possibility of opening new cultivation scenarios in the zones affected by Xfp .

Much evidence supports the ecological and agronomic benefits of diversity, of both crops and environments, for building resilience and sustainability in agroecosystems. Farmers' knowledge about crop diversity is well‐documented, but aside from studies on how farmers exchange seeds and knowledge through networks, the interactions of social factors and the diversity of crops and cultivated environments have been mainly overlooked. One factor receiving attention is farmers' access to land, but in only one of its dimensions, the security of access. Here we address the different strategies by which farmers gain access to land. How does the plurality of modes of access to land influence crop choices, and thereby crop diversity? How does this plurality influence the range of environments available to individual farmers for cultivating crop diversity? Analysing data from 51 interviews with farmers and 312 plots in agrosilvopastoral systems in northwestern Morocco, we described eight different modes of access. Each mode offers different opportunities and constraints concerning the kind of crops that can be grown on the plot. We found that an increase in the number of modes of access to land increases the crop diversity of farmers' holdings, regardless of the total area each farmer cultivates. Accessing additional plots contributed to both environmental heterogeneity and to crop diversity of farms. In striving to gain access to land and to grow diverse crops, farmers are motivated by their notion of what it means to be a ‘real farmer’, that is, the relation to their identity. Farmers mobilize not only their economic power but also their social relationships to gain access to plots of land. Their choices are also based on their relationships to tree crops such as olive, which are economic and cultural keystone species, as well as markers of land ownership and control. Multiple modes of access to land characterize many smallholder farming systems, which support a large fraction of the world's population. Recognizing diverse social practices of access to land that allow farmers to continue to mobilize multiple modes of access can increase resilience against unpredictable events and help maintain sustainable agroecosystems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Résumé De nombreuses études mettent en évidence les rôles écologiques et agronomiques de la diversité, tant des cultures que des environnements, dans la résilience et la durabilité des agroécosystèmes. Les savoirs des agriculteurs et agricultrices liés à la diversité des plantes cultivées sont bien documentés, mais en dehors des études sur les réseaux d'échanges de semences ou de connaissances, les facteurs sociaux ont été largement négligés pour comprendre la diversité des plantes et des environnements cultivés. Un de ces facteurs est l'accès des agriculteurs à la terre, mais il a été uniquement étudié sous l'angle de la sécurité de l'accès. Nous abordons ici les différentes stratégies par lesquelles les agriculteurs accèdent à la terre. Comment la pluralité des modes d'accès à la terre influence‐t‐elle les choix des cultures, et par conséquent la diversité des plantes cultivées? Comment cette pluralité influence‐t‐elle la gamme d'environnements disponibles pour chaque agriculteur afin de cultiver une diversité de plantes? En analysant les données de 51 entretiens avec des agriculteurs et de 312 parcelles dans des systèmes agrosylvopastoraux dans le nord‐ouest du Maroc, nous avons décrit huit modes d'accès à la terre différents. Chaque mode offre différentes opportunités et contraintes concernant le type de cultures qui peuvent être cultivées sur la parcelle. Nous avons mis en évidence une relation positive entre la diversité des modes d'accès à la terre et la diversité des plantes cultivées, relation indépendamment de la superficie totale cultivée par chaque agriculteur. L'accès à des parcelles supplémentaires contribue à la fois à l'hétérogénéité environnementale et à la diversité des plantes cultivées dans les fermes. Les efforts pour accéder à la terre et cultiver diverses plantes met en jeu ce qu'être un ‘vrai agriculteur’ signifie. Les agriculteurs mobilisent non seulement leur capital économique, mais aussi leurs relations sociales pour accéder à de nouvelles parcelles tout au long de l'année. Les cultures arboricoles telles que l'olivier, qui sont des espèces clés sur le plan économique et culturel, sont par ailleurs des indicateurs de propriété et des moyens de contrôle fonciers. La multiplicité des modes d'accès à la terre caractérise de nombreux systèmes de petite agriculture, qui concernent une grande partie de la population mondiale. Reconnaître les diverses pratiques sociales qui permettent aux agriculteurs de continuer à mobiliser plusieurs modes d'accès à la terre peut accroître la résilience face à des événements imprévisibles et contribuer au maintien d'agroécosystèmes durables. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The relationship between diversification and labor productivity is a pressing issue for diversified farming systems (DFS), which must compete with the high labor productivity of specialized and mechanized industrial farming systems. Synergies between multiple production systems represent an alternative pathway for enhancing labor productivity, contrasting with the economies of scale achieved by industrial farming. Facing a lack of technical and institutional support for managing diversified systems, DFS turn to grassroots agroecological networks for support. Permaculture is a grassroots network with an emphasis on diversified production that—despite its international scope and high public profile—has received little scholarly attention. In this exploratory study we assessed the relationship between diversification, labor productivity and involvement with permaculture, using data from 196 enterprises (i.e., distinct sources of income or aspects of a farm business) on 36 permaculture farms in the USA. We characterized diversification in two ways: by income at the level of the whole farm, and by labor for production enterprises only. By fitting a multilevel model of labor productivity (enterprises nested within farms) we assessed the evidence for synergies in production, i.e., positive relationships between diversification and returns to labor. Results indicated that both production diversity and level of involvement in the permaculture network had significant positive effects on labor productivity. This effect disappeared, however, when both diversity and participation were at their highest levels. Results also indicate that high levels of diversification shift tree crops from the lowest labor productivity of any type of production enterprise to the highest. Through this first ever (to our knowledge) systematic investigation of permaculture farms, our results provide support for the presence of production synergies in DFS, and for the role of permaculture in helping farmers achieve these synergies.

Premise of the Study Underutilized crops and their wild relatives are important resources for crop improvement and food security. Cempedak [Artocarpus integer (Thunb). Merr.] is a significant crop in Malaysia but underutilized elsewhere. Here we performed molecular characterization of cempedak and its putative wild relative bangkong (Artocarpus integer (Thunb). Merr. var. silvestris Corner) to address questions regarding the origin and diversity of cempedak. Methods Using data from 12 microsatellite loci, we assessed the genetic diversity and genetic/geographic structure for 353 cempedak and 175 bangkong accessions from Malaysia and neighboring countries and employed clonal analysis to characterize cempedak cultivars. We conducted haplotype network analyses on the trnH‐psbA region in a subset of these samples. We also analyzed key vegetative characters that reportedly differentiate cempedak and bangkong. Key Results We show that cempedak and bangkong are sister taxa and distinct genetically and morphologically, but the directionality of domestication origin is unclear. Genetic diversity was generally higher in bangkong than in cempedak. We found a distinct genetic cluster for cempedak from Borneo as compared to cempedak from Peninsular Malaysia. Finally, cempedak cultivars with the same names did not always share the same genetic fingerprint. Conclusions Cempedak origins are complex, with likely admixture and hybridization with bangkong, warranting further investigation. We provide a baseline of genetic diversity of cempedak and bangkong in Malaysia and found that germplasm collections in Malaysia represent diverse coverage of the four cempedak genetic clusters detected.

The area of degreded peatlands in Indonesia is estimated at 4.4 million ha. Currently, the degraded peatland often a source of environmental problems, including sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land fires. Restoration of degraded peatlands is intended to restore the value, function and benefits of the peat ecosystem, including efforts to prevent land damage, provide protection, and restore the ecosystem. One of the efforts to restore degraded peatlands is through revegetation. Agroforestry is a cropping pattern that uses a combination of tree crops with seasonal crops, and/or with livestock/fisheries activities. Agroforestry systems can be applied to degraded peatlands in production forest areas and other use areas. The advantages of agroforestry systems include; optimization of land, diversification of crops, reduce the risk of failure, can also prevent land preparation (for seasonal crops) with the burn system, and increase carbon stock. The success of an agroforestry system is very dependent on tree management which can reduce adverse effects and maximize the beneficial effects physically, economically, socially and environmentally. The selection of tree and agricultural plant types is important in order to restore degraded peatlands. The jelutung + pineapple agroforestry system provides physical, economic, social and environmental benefits. Jelutung + corn + horticultural crops are able to provide significant benefits. Agroforestry systems can be implemented to mitigate carbon emissions in degraded peatlands.

In Liberia emphases have been placed on reducing deforestation and increasing food security through the transition of smallholder farmers from shifting cultivation to permanent agricultural systems, including tree cropping and agroforestry systems. A structured survey instrument was administered to 80 households in Bong and Lofa counties, Liberia to assess the socio-cultural feasibility of increasing tree cropping and agroforestry practices among smallholder farmers. The survey investigated household use, perceptions and impediments towards tree cropping and agroforestry and livelihood impacts of these practices, including income diversification and food security. Income was the driving motivation for tree cropping, and insecure land tenure was the most significant impediment. Tree cropping households tended to be male-headed, and differed in age distribution. Households that practiced tree cropping had improved income diversification, and those which used agroforestry practices experienced enhanced food security. Respondent perceptions regarding competition between tree crops and herbaceous crops often prevented incorporation of agroforestry practices. Nearly all households practiced shifting cultivation, independent of whether or not they cultivated trees. This suggests that a transition away from shifting cultivation to agroforestry systems will require greater efforts to address socio-political factors, including cultural perceptions and traditions, land tenure, gender, and household demographics.