The agroforestry approach to land development: Potentials and constraints

Prepared for the Seminar on Agricultural Research in Rwanda: Assessment and Perspectives, Kigali, Rwanda, February 5-12, 1983 (International Seminar "Agricultural Research in Rwanda: Assessment and Perspectives").

Agroforestry is a collective name for a broad range of land use systems and technologies in which woody perennials are deliberately combined on the same land management unit with herbaceous crops and/or animals, either in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence. In the Rwanda context there are many significant agroforestry potentials which could be developed.
As a relatively new field of applied scientific activity, however, agroforestry presently labours under a number of social, scientific and institutional constraints. In order to fulfill its instututional role as a catalytic agent in the promotion of sound agroforestry approaches to land development, ICRAF is endeavoring to develop and disseminate methodological tools for overcoming these constraints and to identify secure institutional niches for agroforestry research and development activities.

In the context of a broadly conceived "farming systems" approach to rural development, ICRAF's diagnostic and design methodology of "midstream" R&D projects which integrate closely with improved extension methods emphasizing a two-way flow of information between responsible government agencies and their rural clients. Following a brief presentation of the main points of this methodology, a possible programme scenerio for agroforestry development in Rwanda is explored. (author)