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Hybrid improved tree fallows: harnessing invasive woody legumes for agroforestry

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Abstract

For several decades, agroforestry specialists have promoted the planting of fallow fields with nitrogen-fixing, fast-growing trees or shrubs to accelerate soil rehabilitation and provide secondary products like woodfuel. Yet, such ‘improved fallows’ have not been widely adopted, in part due to the costs of labour and seedlings. In some situations, however, farmers have developed novel approaches to agroforestry fallows by taking advantage of spontaneous invasions of woody leguminous tree species present in the vicinity of their fields. In this paper, we examine cases from Réunion, highland Madagascar, the Bateke plateau in Congo, and the Palni hills of southern India where farmers have adapted their cultivation practices to take advantage of the invasive characteristics of Australian acacias that were introduced earlier for other reasons. We focus on the key social, economic, and environmental factors that influence farmers in these places to gain opportunistic benefit from these introduced tree species that biologists have been deemed invasive and damaging to local ecosystems and biodiversity. We conclude that opportunistic fallowing of invasives can be viewed as a hybrid strategy combining elements of natural fallows and improved fallows—which we call ‘hybrid improved fallows’—in that it takes advantage of the ‘weedy’ characteristics of introduced leguminous tree species in the landscape and offers a cost-effective and pragmatic strategy for soil and vegetation management for farmers.

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Acknowledgments

All authors shared equally in the development and production of the paper. Tassin’s research was supported by Region-Réunion, Kull and Rangan’s research by ARC-DP0666131. We are grateful to farmers in Réunion, Madagascar highlands, and Palni hills for sharing information and views regarding Australian acacias. The photo showing a fallow on Bateke Plateau was taken by Dominique Louppe. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, and one of them in particular for the inspired title of our concluding section.

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  1. CIRAD, UPR 105 Campus de Baillarguet, 34398, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Jacques Tassin

  2. School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Haripriya Rangan & Christian A. Kull

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  1. Jacques Tassin
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  2. Haripriya Rangan
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  3. Christian A. Kull
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Correspondence to Jacques Tassin.

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Tassin, J., Rangan, H. & Kull, C.A. Hybrid improved tree fallows: harnessing invasive woody legumes for agroforestry. Agroforest Syst 84, 417–428 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-012-9493-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-012-9493-9

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