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The fuel wood scenario and policy issues in India

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Field Document No.49
REGIONAL WOOD ENERGY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN ASIA
GCP/RAS/154/NET
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Bangkok, April 1997
THE WOODFUEL SCENARIO AND
POLICY ISSUES IN INDIA
N.C. SAXENA
Centre for Sustainable Development
LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie
This publication is printed by
the FAO Regional Wood Energy Development Programme in Asia,
Bangkok, Thailand
For copies write to: Regional Wood Energy Development
Programme in Asia Tel: 66-2-280 2760
c/o FAO Regional Offcie for Asia and the Pacific Fax: 66-2-280 0760
Maliwan Mansion, Phra Atit Road, E-mail: rwedp@fao.org
Bangkok, Thailand Internet: http://www.rwedp.org
The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply
the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organiza-
tion of the United nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or
of its authorities, or concerning the delimitations of its frontiers or boundaries.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) alone and do not imply
any opinion on the part of the FAO.
i
FOREWORD
Woodfuels play an important role in India as they do in many other parts of Asia. Annual
consumption in the country as a whole is estimated at 220–300 million tonnes, worth some nine
billion US dollars, and this amount is increasing. At present, woodfuels account for 20–30 per cent
of all energy used in India, and more than 90 per cent of this is in the domestic sector. However,
woodfuel is more than just a commodity being consumed: it is being supplied, processed and
traded. This has many implications, economically, socially, environmentally and otherwise.
Furthermore, India is a vast sub-continent with widely varying geographical, agro-ecological and
socio-economic conditions, and therefore aggregate data can tell us little. The complexity and
heterogeneity of woodfuel-related issues in India present policy-makers with major challenges
because they are associated with a range of intricate problems, particularly involving small
farmers and the landless poor. At the same time, however, the potential of wood energy extends
beyond subsistence, providing sound and viable options for modern development and
applications. The central questions are then: to what extent and in what manner can woodfuel be
subject to policy making? who should make the policies? and on whose priorities should they be
based?
It is not an easy matter to address these issues. However, the FAO-RWEDP is fortunate in having
a long-standing cooperation with Dr N C Saxena, an eminent social scientist and administrator
with a good deal of experience in social forestry programmes, who takes a deep interest in the
social and human problems at stake. Dr Saxena was in a position to give an independent
overview and critical analysis of the many aspects of fuelwood, ranging from sources of supply to
the people involved to end-uses. The present document gives an account of his findings.
The subject is of far more than academic importance. Initially, this material was prepared as a
comprehensive briefing for the Foundation Course for All India Service Officers at the Lal Bahadur
Sastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, India, in which Mr Tara N Bhattarai,
Wood Energy Resources Specialist at the RWEDP, has provided invaluable assistance. However,
as the RWEDP believes that the same material will be of great help to other institutes and
organizations in India and beyond, it is published as a field document for wider distribution.
Dr W S Hulscher,
Chief Technical Adviser,
FAO-RWEDP
ii
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword ....................................................................................................................................i
1. Woodfuel as a Source of Energy.........................................................................................1
2. Wood – Largely Traditional, But Not Phasing Out ............................................................4
3. People Involved in Fuelwood Collection and Use.............................................................8
3.1. Traditional vs Improved
Chulha
(Cookstoves)................................................................9
4. Estimates of Demand for Fuelwood .................................................................................11
5. Prices...................................................................................................................................14
6. Sources of Supply..............................................................................................................18
6.1. Supply of Wood from Farm Lands................................................................................19
6.2. Fuelwood from Non-forest Public Lands.......................................................................21
6.3. Problems in Gathering Fuelwood from Forest Lands ...................................................22
6.4. Estimated Supply Potential...........................................................................................23
7. Government Programmes in the Last Two Decades ......................................................25
7.1. Fuelwood from Forest Lands........................................................................................27
8. The Role of Other Agencies in Wood Production............................................................30
8.1. NGOs............................................................................................................................30
8.2. Involvement of the Private Sector in Wood Production.................................................32
8.3. Wood Production in the Cooperative Sector.................................................................34
9. Economic Aspects of Wood and Fuelwood Under Different Production Systems......35
9.1. Wood from Forest Lands ..............................................................................................35
9.2. Wood from Non-forest Public Lands.......................................................................37
9.3. Cost-benefit Analysis of Eucalyptus on Farm Lands.....................................................39
iv
10. Fuelwood Markets ............................................................................................................43
10.1. Different Categories of Traders in Western UP..........................................................47
10.2. Case Study of a Fuelwood Market..............................................................................49
11. Charcoal Markets..............................................................................................................55
11.1. Charcoal Production from Prosopis in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.................................56
12. Fuelwood Production Policy in Perspective..................................................................59
13. Summary of Recommendations for Different Categories of Lands.............................61
14. Glossary ............................................................................................................................64
15. Abbreviations....................................................................................................................66
16. References........................................................................................................................68
1
1. WOODFUEL AS A SOURCE OF ENERGY
Wood is a heterogeneous product. Depending on the intended use, there are different price
ranges and different processing requirements. Even a single species, such as eucalyptus, can
be sawn for timber or used as pulpwood, poles or fuelwood. These products are processed
differently, sold by different traders, and fetch different prices, the highest being for timber and
the lowest for woodfuel. Although the use of logs has increased1 in recent years (Natarajan,
1996), the fuelwood used generally consists of fallen wood, smaller pieces, twigs, wood
shavings, saw dust, bark and roots, which cannot be used elsewhere. Thus, fuelwood is an
inferior form of wood and often a by-product. In this paper we are concerned with the use of
wood as fuel, and not as a raw material for pulp, furniture etc.
The total primary energy consumption in India in 1991 was 356–425 Mtoe (million tonnes of oil
equivalent2), with the share of biomass energy ranged from 36–46 per cent, as shown in Table 1.
Thus, woodfuel alone accounts for a share of about 20–30 per cent of the total energy
consumption in the country. More than 90 per cent of the total quantity of woodfuel used is in
the domestic sector, for cooking and heating water. In addition, woodfuels are used for
cremation, in hotels and small eating places, in the manufacture of household materials such as
bricks, tiles and lime, and in agro-processing, such as jaggery-making and the curing of
tobacco.
As regards domestic woodfuel use, Table 2 shows that woodfuel is used by all sections of rural
society, but its use in urban areas has declined with higher incomes, being replaced by
commercial fuels such as electricity, soft coke, kerosene and LPG. Even in urban areas, poor
households are heavily dependent on woodfuel. However, unlike in rural areas, where most of
7DEOH#4=#3ULPDU\#HQHUJ\#XVH#LQ#,QGLD
Fuels Quantity Per capita energy (GJ/yr)
Coal 217 million tonnes 7.49
Oil 53.7 million tonnes 2.71
Natural gas 17.9 billion m30.79
Electricity 77.8 x 109 units 0.33
Total commercial 11.32
Fuelwood3227–298 million tonnes 4.03–5.29
Crop residues 97–156 million tonnes 1.77–2.68
Cattle dung 37–114 million tonnes 0.60–1.85
Total biomass energy 6.40–9.82
Total energy 17.72–21.14
(Ravindranath and Hall, 1995: 15)
1 This is more in areas where farm forestry produce could not be sold as pulp or poles, and therefore had to be used as firewood.
2 Energy conversion: one Mt coal = 29.15 PJ; one Mt oil = 42.0 PJ; one tWh electricity = 13 GJ; one t dung = 13.7 GJ; one billion
m3 natural gas = 37.19 PJ; one t air dry fuelwood = 15 GJ; one t air dry crop residue = 13 GJ (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995: 15).
3 There are several estimates of consumption of fuelwood, as explained in Section 4.
2
the fuel required is gathered, the poor in urban areas have to buy their biofuel. This is burnt in
low-efficiency devices and the cost per unit of useful energy is much higher than that obtained
from modern fuels. The urban poor and middle classes also use wood charcoal, the share of
which in total urban fuel consumption is about 2.3 per cent. An old report (GOI, 1979) gives the
annual consumption of charcoal in absolute terms as 8.6 million tonnes.
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Annual household income (Rupees4)
Fuel Up to
3,000 3,000–
6,000 6,000–
12,000 12,000–
18,000 18,000 and
above Average
Rural
Soft coke 1.3 1.6 4.7 4.9 7.3 2.1
Kerosene 2.7 2.6 2.3 1.8 1.8 2.6
Electricity 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.9 1.0 0.4
Firewood 60.8 59.0 56.8 53.5 49.3 59.2
Vegetable wastes 16.1 14.6 15.6 18.2 16.6 15.6
Dung cake 18.9 21.8 20.0 20.7 24.0 20.1
Commercial 4.2 4.6 7.6 7.6 10.1 5.1
Non-commercial 95.8 95.4 92.4 92.4 89.9 94.9
Urban
Soft coke 14.9 23.6 31.1 20.0 19.8 23.2
Kerosene 19.4 23.8 19.6 17.7 14.8 21.1
Electricity 0.8 1.7 2.6 3.5 4.9 1.9
LPG - 5.2 15.9 34.0 41.3 9.8
Firewood 54.9 37.3 22.8 16.7 13.9 35.5
Vegetable wastes 2.6 1.4 1.4 2.7 1.1 1.7
Dung cake 5.2 4.5 3.9 4.1 2.3 4.5
Charcoal 2.2 2.5 2.7 1.3 1.5 2.3
Commercial 35.1 56.8 71.9 76.9 82.7 56.0
Non-commercial 64.9 43.2 28.1 23.5 17.3 44.0
(TERI, 1996: 191)
4 34 Indian Rupees = 1 US$ in 1996
3
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0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Haryana
Punjab
Delhi
Bihar
UP
Meghalaya
MP
JK
West Bengal
Kerala
Gujarat
Orissa
Maharashtra
Tamil Nadu
Assam
AP
Rajasthan
Karnataka
HP
All India
State
% total rural domestic energy consumption
Crop residue
Dung cake
Wood
4
2. WOOD – LARGELY TRADITIONAL, BUT NOT PHASING OUT
Table 2 tells us that wood was meeting 59.2 per cent of total fuel needs in rural areas and 35.5
per cent in urban areas in 1991–92. The main non-commercial energy sources combined –
woodfuel, dung and agricultural residues – met 95 per cent of fuel needs in rural areas. Of
these, dung and agricultural wastes are widespread as fuels in agriculturally prosperous regions
with fertile soils and controlled irrigation, such as Punjab, Haryana, UP and north Bihar, (see
Figure 1), but wood continues to be the main domestic fuel in less endowed and poorer regions
(NCAER, 1985).
In the past, biomass resources were virtually the only energy forms used in India, even in urban
areas. This situation has changed significantly during the last 50 years. Energy-use patterns in
urban areas are changing, with greater use of LPG and kerosene. In a study by NCAER in
1985, it was found that firewood consumption had declined from a level of 16.5 million tonnes in
1978–79 to about 9.5 million tonnes in 1985, despite a large increase in the urban population
over the same period. During this period, fuelwood consumption dropped in urban India by 40
per cent, but kerosene and LPG consumption rose by 57 per cent and 98 per cent respectively
(Natarajan, 1990). The extent to which this trend will continue is uncertain, and will depend to a
large extent on government policies as regards their supply and pricing. It is unlikely that
fuelwood will be completely replaced, as poorer sections of the community may lack the cash
resources to purchase the minimum amount of kerosene or LPG, or appliances which use
these fuels. They may also lack the security to keep such fuels or appliances while absent from
their living quarters, forcing them to purchase woodfuel in more expensive small amounts on a
regular, perhaps daily, basis, and use cheaper and less efficient cooking appliances.
In rural areas, there seem to be three main trends in domestic energy. One involves the
increasing use of modern forms of energy for productive and household activities, including
irrigation pumping and lighting. A second is that in some areas rural people, instead of
switching up the energy ladder to modern fuels, are switching down it to straw, leaves and
twigs. The use of inferior fuels for cooking by some rural people has implications for their quality
of life. It is also possible that their general purchasing power has gone down.
The third trend is that the relative importance of the three major biofuels has changed over the
years in rural areas. The animal population has grown very little in the last two decades. Also,
more than one million bio-gas plants have been installed during the last 15 years. It is therefore
likely that the quantity of dried dung used as fuel might not have increased significantly. With an
increase in overall energy consumption, the share of this fuel might have come down. The last
15 years have also witnessed a big increase in agricultural production. This has been mainly in
foodgrains. New crop varieties yield less husk and straw. Their by-products are used, for the
most part, to feed animals. The yields of crops like cotton, pulses etc., whose stalks are used
as fuel, have not grown much. Therefore, the share of crop wastes is also likely to be less than
the pre-Green Revolution level.
This is confirmed by Table 3, which shows that between 1978–79 and 1992–93, the share of
woodfuel in total energy consumption increased from 54.57 to 61.60 per cent, although the
share of non-commercial fuels in rural areas went down from 94 to 92 per cent.
5
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Item % share in 1978–79 % share in 1992–93
Coal/soft coke 1.92 0.38
Kereosene 2.55 4.44
Dung cake 22.51 17.00
Firewood logs 18.95 32.49
Firewood twigs 35.62 29.11
Crop waste 17.41 13.35
Others 1.03 3.23
(Natarajan, 1995a)
It follows, therefore, that the share of firewood in fuel consumption must have gone up
significantly. This should cause concern, for more wood means more collection, leading to an
acceleration in the diminution of tree cover.
In the context of a possible improvement in poverty levels over the next 25 years, a question
arises whether many rural people might prefer acquiring fuel from the market, rather than use
their time and energy to collect it. This is, however, not considered likely for several reasons.
First, as Figure 2 shows, the share of purchased fuels in total fuelwood and dung cake
consumption presently does not change much as incomes increase. Rather, higher rates of
bought firewood indicate extreme deterioration of the natural environment, and are not linked
with household prosperity.
Second, the agriculture-based rural economy has slack seasons, and lends itself to seasonal
peaks in gathering. Third, as wood resources increase locally (either due to implementation of
government policies or natural spread of
prosopis
shrubs), time taken in fuelwood gathering
)LJXUH#5=#3HU#FHQW#VKDUH#RI#SXUFKDVHG#IXHO#LQ#WRWDO#IXHOZRRG#DQG#GXQJ#FRQVXPSWLRQ/#E\#LQFRPH#JURXS
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Up to
3,000 3,000-
5,999 6,000-
11,999 12,000-
17,999 18,000
Annual household income
% share of purchased fuel
in total energy consumption
Fuelwood
Dung
(NCAER, 1985)
7
and its opportunity cost will decline. Fourth, only rich farmers produce sufficient crop residues to
serve as a significant fuel source. Being a private resource, the poor have little access to it,
especially with the monetization of the rural economy.
Lastly, the supply of LPG is not sufficient to meet even urban demand. It is therefore not easily
available to villagers. Kerosene is used in villages, but mainly for lighting. Its use as a cooking
fuel is rare, and it is also not favoured for heating in villages. Since firewood is obtained almost
free of cost, there is no inducement for villagers to change. Thus their dependence on fuelwood
is likely to continue for a long time to come.
Referring to the high dependence of the Indian population on wood-based energy, Shah (1988)
predicted that firewood would continue to be used as it is (a) the least expensive fuel; (b)
consistent with cultural patterns and living habits; (c) environmentally sound; (d) easy to
propagate and/or regenerate anywhere; (e) amenable to minimum intervention for production
and utilization; (f) socially acceptable; (g) sustainable; (h) responsive to low inputs and low
maintenance; and (i) liable to improve site and soil conditions progressively.
8
3. PEOPLE INVOLVED IN FUELWOOD COLLECTION AND USE
In most Indian rural communities, it is generally women who dominate in carrying out the time-
consuming tasks of fetching water, fuel, fodder and leaf litter, in addition to performing
household chores and raising children. Poverty in India is generally considered to be linked with
lack of private land, or land with low productivity. Changes in gathering from public lands go
largely unnoticed, and are not accounted for in GNP (CSE, 1985). However, gathering is an
important economic activity for poor women. Much of the hardship suffered by women and
forest dwellers in India is due to deforestation, which has removed the resource on which their
livelihoods were previously based (Dasgupta, 1988: 7). In a study of the Orissa and Chattisgarh
areas, which were heavily forested a few decades back, the average journey required to collect
fuelwood has increased four-fold in 20 years (Fernandes and Menon, 1987: 15). The receding
tree line means that only adult community members can now go to forests for wood collection.
Diminished supplies force them to shift to inferior fuels such as leaves (which cause more
smoke), as they must market a greater proportion of their collection of fuelwood (Fernandes et
al.
,
1988: 116, 124).
The results of some other studies on human hours spent per week per household are
summarized in Table 4 (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995). The authors estimated that at the
national level, the average number of hours spent on gathering biomass was about two hours
per day per household. If only 50% of rural families are assumed to be involved in this activity,
the total labour spent is 50 million x 2/24 = four million man-years. Such human effort for
gathering may increase with declining supply and may have important social and economic
consequences for women and children, the principal gatherers. Self-employment of this
magnitude is, however, distress employment, as it is at the cost of the gatherers’ health and the
children’s education, and when it brings cash, it leads to environmental damage.
7DEOH#7=#+XPDQ#HIIRUW#LQ#JDWKHULQJ#IXHOZRRG#IRU#GRPHVWLF#XVH
Location Human hours spent/week/household
Six villages (Karnataka) (1977)a15.1
Dhanera, 10 villages (Gujarat) (1988) 11.2
Dhanwas (Haryana) (1984) 14.3
BNPura (Orissa), (1986) 35.0
a The year given in parentheses refers to the period of study.
(Ravindranath and Hall, 1995)
A study (Agarwal and Narain, 1985: 189) of 170 households in nine villages in Ranchi district
(Bihar) showed that headloading (collecting fuelwood from public lands by the poor, and then
carrying it on their heads to the nearest market) had emerged as an important profession in the
previous 15 years; and more than a fifth of the households in the surveyed villages reported
headloading as their major occupation. Another study (Agarwal, 1987: 181) estimated that at
least three to four million people were involved in this profession, making it India's biggest
source of employment in the energy sector. In Rajasthan alone, 400,000 families are to be
engaged in extraction of firewood from forests reported (NWDB, 1988: 15). From Madhya
Pradesh forests, six million tonnes of firewood are taken out every year for sale in towns and
9
cities (exclusive of wood collected for domestic use). It is a low paid and a high risk occupation,
as pilfering wood from reserved forests for sale is an offence (collecting wood for own
consumption from protected forests is permitted on paper, but frowned upon by the forest staff
in practice).
A study described the working conditions of women in South Bihar as follows:
Every day, some 300 women firewood pickers disappear into the forests. They
cut timber and greenwood, which is illegal. Sixty-eight per cent of them have
been hurt either by the axe or by wild animals while collecting wood. They earn
around Rs 120 a month, and half of them are always in debt. They have a two-
day cycle, walking as much as 12 km to collect fuelwood and then travel by train
to the town for sale – along the way, others make money off them: the railway
man who allows them free on trains, the village headman who takes a cut, and
the forest guard who looks the other way when forests are being axed.
(Ninan,
1981)
The vagaries of weather also worsen the hardship of collection and use of the fuels. The
monsoon months are particularly troublesome in gathering of forest-based fuel. With the
lashing of incessant rain and water everywhere, not only collection but also drying of wood and
animal dung, usually done in the sun, becomes very difficult. The need for storing of fuel
become acute and shortage of storage space in the house also makes storing difficult.
3.1. Traditional vs Improved
Chulha
(Cookstoves)
The use of traditional cookstoves has wide-ranging health implications (Nanda and Khurana,
1995). Eye and lung disease caused by kitchen smoke are common, particularly among female
household members, who spend long hours in close proximity to hearths. Prolonged exposure
to smoke emission and soot, especially from wood, biomass and cow dung, aggravated by ill-
designed hearths and stoves, lack of cooking space, improper arrangements for the realease of
smoke, shortage of rooms and overcrowding, cause heart ailments and chronic bronchitis.
Carbon monoxide, an important constituent of woodsmoke, reduces the haemoglobin content of
the blood and increases the risks of anaemia, particularly to the poor, illiterate, malnourished
rural women who are the hearths’ and stoves’ main users. Another constituent, formaldehyde,
also causes irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, damages lung tissue and exacerbates the
problems of skin wounds (Sugumar, 1990).
The impact of these conditions on the life expectancy and quality of life of the women involved
is severe. The danger to their physical health can be reduced through better designed stoves,
and a programme to introduce improved chulhas (ICs) has seen the number of ICs installed
grow from 0.8 million in 1985 to over 12 million by the end of March 1992 (Natarajan, 1995b).
Against the low thermal efficiency of around eight per cent characteristic of conventional
chulhas, the ICs claim to have an efficiency of between 24 and 26 per cent. Improved chulha
models provide a chimney to let out smoke from the kitchen. Cleaning and cooking vessels is
made easier as carbon deposits are considerably reduced. The ICs could also be inexpensive if
made of local materials, so even poor households could afford them.
Yet, this programme, a decade since its initiation, has not achieved the level of success one
would expect, considering the number of positive aspects. Also, a survey (Natarajan, 1995b)
10
showed that only 12 per cent of the working ICs could claim 16 per cent or higher thermal
efficiency, whereas 50 per cent of them worked at 10 per cent or less, thus showing no saving
of fuel over the traditional models. One-third of the chulhas installed became non-functional
within the first year of installation. About 15 per cent of chulhas did not survive the first three
months.
The main reasons cited for disuse were construction and installation defects, with the result that
the ICs’ performance turned out to be worse than that of the traditional chulha. Improper
maintenance is another important factor for the non-functioning of the chulhas. It is
recommended that the chimney should be cleaned once a fortnight to remove the carbon
deposits, but this was frequently not done.
One of the reasons for this indifference on the part of the beneficiaries is that they have little or
no financial stake in the chulhas installed in their houses. They do not value the asset acquired.
The cost of the chulha for the beneficiary is barely Rs 10, while the market price of the chimney
pipe provided along with it is more than Rs 50. Some households have opted for the chulhas
only on the attraction of the subsidy in the form of pipes, iron grates etc. In a number of cases
the chimney pipes have even been misused as parts for sanitary latrines, irrigation channels
etc., or even sold in the open market after being removed from the chulha.
In contrast, another device propagated by the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources,
using bio-gas, has been accepted by the villagers and is in fact demanded by them. Though
there is an element of subsidy involved, the financial commitment of the beneficiary is fairly high
– over Rs 5,000 – but they are willing to pay. They are convinced of the usefulness of bio-gas,
which is not true of the improved chulha. The perceived benefits associated with the ICs are not
as substantial as they should be. This is down to two major problems: faulty construction and
poor maintenance because of indifference. Both are to be corrected.
11
4. ESTIMATES OF DEMAND FOR FUELWOOD
Several estimates for fuelwood demand are available, but these vary so widely that a degree of
agnosticism is in order. The Forest Survey of India (FSI, 1988: 46) estimated that there was a
gap of 130 Mt between demand and internal production of firewood in the country in 1987.
There are differences even in the figures of actual consumption estimated by different
agencies. An earlier estimate (GOI, 1962) gave the consumption of fuelwood in 1960–61 as 60
Mt. This was being met with 10 Mt from recorded forest sources and 50 Mt from private and
community lands and from unrecorded removal from forests. A survey in 1981 (Table 5) gave a
figure of 94.5 Mt as fuelwood consumption in 1978–79. From these figures, the annual rate of
growth in fuelwood consumption between 1960–61 and 1978–79 works out as 2.5 per cent,
which appears reasonable. However, an NCAER survey in 1959 estimated consumption of
fuelwood in 1963 as 97.2 Mt. As this would suggest that there was no increase in fuelwood
consumption during the period 1963–79, which is unlikely, we think the lower figure of 60 Mt of
fuelwood consumption in 1960 could be closer to reality.
There are several possible reasons for the differences in the various estimates of demand and
consumption. Firstly, it is difficult to be precise about demand for an item which is mostly
collected and where substitutions occur: smaller twigs and leaves can be substituted for larger
sticks and logs, and where fuelwood is easily accessible and opportunity cost of rural labour
remains low, fuelwood can replace other non-commercial and commercial fuels, leading to
higher estimates of needs. Secondly, there are difficulties in assessing the direct and indirect
impacts of various causal variables such as product price, prices of substitutes, size and
location of user households, price and income elasticities of demand, and likely changes in the
causal variables themselves.
Thirdly, consumption of fuelwood varies greatly with availability. It is generally a function of the
cost of obtaining the fuelwood (Dewees, 1989: 1161). For instance, the annual amount of wood
used in Raipur, which is surrounded by dense forests, was almost one t per household,
whereas in Hyderabad, a metropolitan town, it was less than 0.5 t per household (Dunkerley et
al., 1990). Variations in total consumption of cooking fuels by households and the mix of fuels
used were influenced by household income, accessibility and prices of the different fuel
supplies, climate, resource endowment, size of city, household fuel preferences, social
characteristics, food habits and regional cooking styles.
In spite of such problems, several attempts to estimate the demand for fuelwood and other
sources of household energy have been made over the last three decades. We discuss one of
these in some detail and summarize the others.
The first attempt to estimate and forecast total energy consumption and sources of supply was
made in 1965 by the Energy Survey Committee of India (ESCI). Data on consumption of non-
commercial fuels were derived from household sample surveys in Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi
conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research in 1958 (NCAER, 1959). The
surveys estimated the average per capita domestic energy consumption to be 0.38 tonne of
coal equivalent (tce) and 0.40 tce in rural and metropolitan areas respectively. Income elasticity
of demand for domestic energy was estimated only for the city dwellers and was 0.4 for the
group with a per capita income above Rs 300 each year. Since energy use estimates for urban
areas other than the three metropolitan cities were not available, the committee assumed it to
be 0.39 tce per capita. The committee also assumed that energy consumption during the
12
preceding decade had increased by 4.5 per cent, i.e. equivalent to the income elasticity of
energy demand in the cities. To derive the figure for estimated non-commercial energy use,
commercial energy consumption (for which relatively better data were available) was subtracted
from the estimated total energy consumption. Within non-commercial sources, estimated
contribution of fuelwood, animal dung, and agricultural residues was based on the assumption
that their relative shares did not change over time.
7DEOH#8=#2EVHUYHG#KRXVHKROG#FRQVXPSWLRQ#LQ#4<:<#+DFFRUGLQJ#WR#1&$(5/#4<;8,#DQG#(6&,#SURMHFWLRQV#IRU
4<;4#+*2,/#4<98,1#)LJXUHV#0W/#H[FHSW#IRU#HOHFWULFLW\/#ZKHUH#7:K1
Description Actual consumption in 1979 Projections of demand for 1981
Electricity 7.3 17.0
Soft coke 6.5 28.0
Oil products 4.2 10.2
Fuelwood 94.5 131.0
Dung cakes 71.1 63.0
Agri-residues 30.6 62.0
(Gupta and Ahuja, 1992)
A comparison of columns 2 and 3 of Table 5 shows that the ESCI demand forecasts were not
validated, as the 1979 actual consumption figures were substantially below those projected for
1981. At the same time, animal dung’s observed use in 1979 was significantly higher than the
estimate for 1981. This may mean that dung continued to be a preferred source of household
energy due to its inherent characteristics, such as slow burning, its relatively certain supplies, and
the perception of dung work as an integral part of normal household chores, even in land-owning
families in rural India.
In addition to the above, demand forecasts for fuelwood were made in several other studies, such
as those by the ESCI (GOI, 1965), the NCAER (1985), the Fuel Policy Committee (GOI, 1974),
the National Commission on Agriculture (GOI, 1976), the Working Group on Energy Policy of the
Planning Commission (GOI, 1979), and the Advisory Board on Energy (ABE, 1985). Table 6
presents a summary of their forecasts as regards likely fuelwood consumption for different years.
7DEOH#9=#'HPDQG#IRUHFDVWV#IRU#IXHOZRRG#LQ#0W#+RQH#0W#IXHOZRRG# #31<8#0WFH,
Studies 1971 1976 1981 1983 1991 1993 2000 2005
ESCI 121 130 131 - - - - -
NCAER - 70 - - - - - -
FPC - - 132 131 122 - - -
NCA 105 116 129 141 - - 158 -
WGEP - - - 140 138 131 97 -
ABE - - - - - - - 300–330
13
Not only for fuelwood, but for other biofuels too, the estimates of consumption vary a great deal,
as is shown below:
7DEOH#:=#(VWLPDWHV#RI#ELRIXHO#FRQVXPSWLRQ#LQ#UXUDO#KRXVHKROGV#LQ#PLOOLRQ#WRQQHV2DQQXP
Surveying agency Years of survey Fuelwood Dung cake Crop residues
NCAER 1978–79 93.3 83.2 36.7
REDB 1985–92 181–309 40–115 32–166
IREP 1990–91 169.0 54.2 62.8
(TERI, 1995: 56)
As for future consumption, estimates for 2000 vary from 97 Mt by the WGEP to 300–330 Mt by
the ABE. As already stated, the demand projections of these studies for future years have often
not been matched by the figures of actual consumption in those years, and the predicted
demand has been found exaggerated, often by a factor of two to four, compared with actual
consumption. This suggests that the methodology for estimating demand followed in these
studies perhaps requires some critical scrutiny. Firstly, the term
demand
should be clearly
defined and distinguished from needs and requirements. It would be more precise to use the
term
consumption
. Secondly, discussion of quantification of demand should take into account
prevailing or anticipated prices – the present estimation process makes no reference to prices.
Under normal market conditions, where price is not controlled, there should not be any
difference between demand and supply, as the price level adjusts itself to ensure that whatever
is demanded is supplied at a price which covers the full cost of production. The situation where
a difference exists between supply and demand will exist generally when the price is controlled
by government or is depressed due to gathering, such that the supply takes place at a price
which does not cover the cost of replacement.
Thirdly, fuelwood markets, which have not received the attention of researchers so far, may
have a great influence in shaping demand. To the extent that markets integrate producers with
consumers, they facilitate commodity production, as producers allocate their resources on the
basis of signals they receive from markets. Thus the demand is communicated to the producers
(and gatherers) through the medium of markets. If market conditions are changed, demand for
the product will change, even if other conditions remain undisturbed. Thus demand, and even
supply, is influenced by the nature of markets, and quantification of demand cannot be done in
isolation from market factors. Market conditions for wood are highly distorted due to
government policies, as discussed in Sections 10 and 11. The experience of a glut of
eucalyptus wood in several north Indian markets when shortages existed elsewhere shows that
the gap between supply and demand cannot be bridged by simply enhancing production; other
constraints may be equally relevant. Hence the importance of discussing both demand and
supply in the context of prices and market conditions – in isolation, the terms
demand
and
supply
may signify little.
14
5. PRICES
The price of fuelwood rose fast during 1975–85, as shown below:
7DEOH#;=#5HWDLO#SULFH#RI#ILUHZRRG#LQ#UXUDO#,QGLD
Year All India average retail price
of firewood Rs/tonne All India wholesale price
index (1970–71 = 100) Firewood prices Rs/
tonne at constant
(1970–71) prices
1973 91 140 65
1978 182 185 98
1985 438 350 125
(UNDP, 1986: 113)
Thus, during the period 1973–85, firewood prices almost doubled at constant prices. According
to Leach (1987), the real price of fuelwood increased by 34 per cent in 10 major cities of India
during 1970–82, but another study of 41 towns showed a 50 per cent increase during 1977–86
(Bowonder et al.
,
1988). The same study compared the movement of fuelwood prices with
those of other commodities over the years, as shown in Figure 3.
Thus, fuelwood experienced the highest annual rise in prices in 1972–86, 85 per cent higher
than the rises for wheat and rice.
)LJXUH#6=#$QQXDO#UDWHV#RI#JURZWK#+(,#LQ#SULFHV#EHWZHHQ#4<:5#DQG#4<;9
0 2 4 6 8 101214
Electricity
Food grains
Consumer prices
Kerosene
Coal
Fuelwood
% annual growth rate
15
Inter-city variation in prices
Bowonder's study (1988) quoted above also indicates that in 1986 the price of fuelwood was
more than Rs 600 per tonne in all centres with more than one million inhabitants and more than
Rs 900 per tonne in all centres with more than five million inhabitants. This shows that the size
of an urban centre is a major variable in determining the fuelwood price, quite apart from the
extent of forest area in the vicinity. The proportion of the population using fuelwood is higher in
larger cities, since the proportion of population living in squatter settlements (low income) is
also higher (Von Oppen, 1979; Agarwal and Narain, 1985, Bowonder et al., 1986). In India
there has been a sharp rise in the number of people living in squatter settlements – estimates
indicate that around 30 per cent of India's urban population live in them. In other words, the
issues of fuelwood use in urban centres are intricately connected to poverty, low income,
unemployment and frequency and number of days of work, cash in hand, and rural migration.
The relative increase in price of fuelwood should have implications for inter-fuel substitutions. In
reality, despite the consumers using fuelwood paying more per unit of energy delivered (net
energy consumed) they do not shift to other cheaper fuels. In 1960 and 1977 the cost of unit
energy for kerosene and fuelwood were similar. In 1987 the consumer had to pay twice as
much per GJ of useful energy for fuelwood as for kerosene. Fuelwood is costlier since the
efficiency of burning is of the order of seven to 10 per cent (Gellar, 1983; Gupta, Rao and
Prema, 1983), whereas a kerosene-burning stove has an efficiency of 30 to 40 per cent. In
Delhi, the consumer has to pay four times more to get one unit of useful energy from fuelwood
than from kerosene.
In the case of cooking, which is one of the chief energy-using activities, the primary energy
required to cook a given quantity of meal declines significantly with a shift from traditional to
modern fuels by a factor of four (Figure 4), according to differences in the efficiencies of the
devices.
)LJXUH#7=#(QHUJ\#UHTXLUHG#IRU#FRRNLQJ#D#PHDO#LQ#6RXWK#,QGLD#LQ#0-2FDSLWD
024681012
Dung traditional stove
Firewood traditional stove
Charcoal
Firewood improved stove
Electricity
LPG
Kerosene
Biogas
MJ/capita/day
(Ravindranath and Hall, 1995)
16
Thus the poor not only use more expensive form of wood, but they use it less efficiently. This is
due to a number of factors: (i) poorer sections of the population consider fuelwood to be a
cheaper fuel; (ii) in a fuelwood-burning stove, it is possible to use other biomass fuels and
agricultural wastes, and this is done by many poorer income groups; (iii) fuelwood stoves are
very inexpensive and kerosene stoves cost almost 10 times more (the capital market is very
flawed for poorer sections of society); (iv) kerosene is an item which is controlled by the
government and the maximum quantity sold to one household is not enough to manage both
cooking and lighting; (v) those residing in temporary squatter settlements prefer not to invest in
items that have to be taken with them when they move to another settlement, (vi) a large
proportion of the poor, who live in unauthorized slums, cannot claim even these inadequate
supplies since they are unable to get ration cards that grant them access to the public
distribution system; and (vii) real cost in terms of the number of visits required to government-
authorized shops, the waiting period and its opportunity cost may be much higher.
Fuelwood prices are monitored by the Labour Bureau, Shimla. According to their records,
fuelwood prices in some of the major towns of India remained almost constant during the period
1985–90 (see Saxena, 1995, for district-wise changes in fuelwood prices). Despite the fact that
degradation of forest lands has continued unabated, and social forestry on community lands
has not been a viable programme, fuelwood prices in India after 1985 have not gone up for two
reasons. First, farmers in the commercialized and surplus regions of India produced a great
deal of eucalyptus wood, which had to be sold as fuelwood, being surplus to the need for poles
and pulpwood. Second, the greatest potential for supply of fuelwood at little opportunity cost is
through shrubs. These positive developments, though unconnected with government policies,
still leave out a large proportion of rural population for whom fuelwood is scarce.
As a consequence, to speak of a ‘fuelwood problem’ in India is somewhat misleading. Land
production capabilities and access to biomass vary from region to region and this has an impact
on whether energy for cooking is a problem for people in the rural areas. One way to classify
regions with respect to fuelwood availability could be:
Regions with proximity to forests;
Fertile and irrigated cultivated land;
Areas with access to shrubs;
Areas where farm forestry has been successful; and
Areas where dung must be returned to fields to maintain productivity;
Although empirical data on each of these regions is sadly lacking, one could hypothesize on the
basis of field experience that fuelwood is an acute problem more in the last type of region,
which may cover roughly half of India's geographical area. In forest regions, the issue is not of
physical scarcity but of lack of income, which drives the poor to do headloading. In regions two
and four, there would be a class dimension too, that is, the poor and landless may face
shortages, even when it is not an issue for the surplus farmers.
Even if the poor have land, their immediate preoccupation is the need for quick solutions to
desperate food and income deficits (Cecelski, 1987), and they cannot be expected to use their
17
lands for the production of fuelwood. Thus the earlier social forestry projects, in focusing only
on fuelwood, proved insufficient in defining what was needed at the project level.
Probably the most seriously affected region in India from the point of view of demand for
fuelwood and fodder is the Deccan Plateau. In this dry region with little ground water, people
have used up most of the woody materials either for construction or fuels, and they are
dependent on straw and dung as fuels. Typically these regions have poor agricultural
production, which may be partially caused by not returning the straw and dung to the field.
These regions deserve top priority in fuelwood production schemes.
3URVRSLV#MXOLIORUD=#1DWXUH¶V#JLIW#WR#WKH#SRRU#DQG#ODQGOHVV"
18
6. SOURCES OF SUPPLY
Fuelwood is generally gathered by rural people on both public and private lands. The share of
each source of fuelwood supply at the consuming point in 1978–79, based on an NCAER
survey (1985), is shown in Table 9.
A more recent survey of the primary sources of woodfuel shows that the total consumption of
wood in 1991 was 172.5 million tonnes, as shown in Table 10.
7DEOH#<=#6RXUFHV#RI#VXSSO\#RI#ILUHZRRG#LQ#,QGLD#LQ#4<:;±:<#LQ#0W#SHU#\HDU
Rural Urban Grand total
Logs Twigs Total Logs Twigs Total
Collected from
i. Own land 5.2 9.1 14.3 14.3
ii. Neighbour's land 0.3 3.0 3.3 3.3
iii. Forest land 4.6 18.9 23.5 23.5
iv. Roadsides etc. 1.3 24.4 25.7 0.4 1.6 2.0 27.7
Total collected 11.4 55.4 66.8 0.4 1.6 2.0 68.8
Purchased 8.7 3.3 12.0 11.1 2.6 13.7 25.7
Total 20.1 58.7 78.8 11.5 4.2 15.7 94.5
(Leach, 1987)
7DEOH#43=#6RXUFHV#RI#VXSSO\#RI#ZRRGIXHOV#LQ#4<<4#LQ#,QGLD
Source Details Total Fuelwood Contribution
in Million Tonnes/Year
Forests Felling of trees 19.0
Lopping of twigs and
branches 42.0
Logging wastes 9.5
Shrubs on degraded lands and
roadsides 46.0
Tree planting on 17 million hectares
during 1975–90 through social and
farm forestry programmes
tops, twigs, small branches
and poles 40.0
Homestead gardens twigs and branches 16.0
Total 172.5
(Ravindranath and Hall, 1995)
19
These two tables show that a good deal of fuelwood is still gathered and then consumed by the
gatherer, and thus fuelwood continues to be by and large a non-monetized commodity. Even
when firewood is traded, studies show that rural wood markets are small, localized and lack
capital and hence buying capacity (FAO, 1987). The fuelwood supplied to these markets comes
from farmers' produce as well as from head-loaders, bullock carts and merchants who buy
wood from forest auctions. The fact that fuelwood markets supply just 25 per cent of the total
fuelwood which is consumed has two implications for the production of fuelwood as a farm crop.
First, gatherers can always undercut producers in the pricing of fuelwood; the producers would
be price-takers, rather than price-makers. Second, the market price of fuelwood would always
be lower than its social cost for replacement of growing stock through investments in
plantations. These considerations make production of wood by farmers for fuelwood markets a
non-viable proposition. These considerations indicate that the fuelwood gaps can be met only
though such trees on public lands which produce a lot of twigs and branches that can be
gathered, and not through commercial production on farm lands. In fact French (1985) has
argued that in developing societies with plenty of open public lands and poverty, producers will
have no incentive to produce wood on farm lands in view of depressed prices of wood due to
gathering.
6.1. Supply of Wood from Farm Lands
The above two tables also show that non-forest lands are a significant source of fuelwood.
Production of fuelwood from farm lands can be considered under two heads: from traditional
agroforestry and homegardens models, and from the new activity of farm forestry which was
initiated in the late 1970s.
Traditional agroforestry patterns
Trees are protected, planted and managed on farm lands in India in a variety of situations. In
Kerala, a region of high rainfall and good soils, farmers plant trees on homesteads and on
farms to maximize overall returns from land. In arid western Rajasthan, farmers protect
khejri
(
Prosopis cineraria
) and
bordi
(
Zizyphus
spp.) trees to increase soil productivity and land
sustainability. These trees recycle nutrients and provide both fodder for cattle and mulch and
shade for crops, and thus complement farm production. In the hills, trees are maintained on
farm boundaries for subsistence products, like fodder and fuelwood. Casuarina plantations for
urban fuelwood have been a part of the rural landscape in southern coastal India for more than
a century now (Hill, 1982: 159).
In addition to the three well known patterns above, there are scattered studies from other
regions describing the nature of tree-crop interaction on farm lands.
Prosopis juliflora
occurs
widely on all wastelands of Tamil Nadu, but in Ramanathapuram, where rainfall is confined to
the north-east monsoon and substantial saline patches occur, prosopis is used to reclaim fallow
lands. These are allowed on farmlands for four years, after which an annual crop is taken for
two years, and again prosopis is allowed to invade the field. It is also used for making charcoal,
and it is estimated that 15,000 tonnes of charcoal are transported annually from
Ramanathapuram to Madras.
20
$#SRSODU#SODQWDWLRQ#XQGHU#DJURIRUHVWU\
:RRGIXHO#IRU#WKH#SRRU
21
Farm forestry
Due to the popularity of growing trees on farm lands, with a view to earning income or avoiding
the supervision problems associated with irrigated agriculture, the availability of fuelwood has
considerably increased in certain regions of India. The shares of total collected firewood
represented by the different sources of collection have also undergone a change due to higher
production of wood on farms, as shown in Table 11. In 1978–79, own farms and nearby forests
were the two major sources, each contributing to one-third of the total collection.
On the other hand, nearly half of the households collected wood from their own farms in 1992–
93. The share originating from forests shrank to half of the 1978–79 figure, mainly because of
the legislation enacted by the state governments banning the felling of trees in forests in many
parts of India.
7DEOH#44=#0DMRU#VRXUFH#RI#FROOHFWLRQ#RI#ILUHZRRG#+SHUFHQWDJH#RI#KRXVHKROGV,
Items 1978–79 1992–93
Own farm 35.14 48.50
Roadside bushes and trees 23.90 29.80
Forests 35.42 17.00
Others 5.54 4.70
Total 100.00 100.00
(Natarajan, 1996)
6.2. Fuelwood from Non-forest Public Lands
Village commons, roadsides, tank foreshores and other such open access lands are the
traditional sites for collecting fuelwood among rural people. Often these degraded lands offer
only woody shrubs, such as prosopis (
Prosopis juliflora)
and lantana (
Lantana camara
). These
are not favoured species, because of the presence of thorns in the case of prosopis and low
density in the case of lantana. Yet the absence of commercial interest in these species helps
the poor in their access to such shrubs. In many semi-arid regions the natural spread of
prosopis shrubs provides excellent fuelwood for both consumption and sale at almost zero
opportunity costs to the poor. According to a field study (Ravindranath and Hall, 1995) in five
villages of the semi-arid district of Anantpur (Andhra Pradesh) 86 per cent of households met
more than 75 per cent of their cooking needs from prosopis alone. Here gathering of fuelwood
from degraded public lands has become a cottage industry, as much of it goes to the nearby
metropolitan town, Bangalore. As much as 10 per cent of the local population gets employment
from this activity (Agarwala, 1990: 197).
Some of the positive features of prosopis from the point of view of its use as fuel are hardiness,
wide adaptability to various types of problematic soils, its self-productive mechanism, profuse
seeding, self-dissemination and propagation, high calorific value, charcoal, non-browsability by
cattle and goats, nitrogen fixing qualities, resistance to prolonged periods of droughts, and
coppicing capacity (Verma, 1987).
22
6.3. Problems in Gathering Fuelwood from Forest Lands
Despite forest policy being timber-oriented, forest lands during the colonial phase provided
twigs and branches as fuel to the people, and with adequate supplies from forests it was
possible to satisfy the market demand as well as meet the people's demand. There is however
evidence to show that people's access to forests for meeting their basic subsistence needs has
deteriorated, and that this is fairly widespread (Chambers et al., 1989). Some of the processes
which have caused this are:
Deforestation;
Priority being given to man-made plantations in place of mixed species;
People's lack of awareness about their rights and privileges.
Forests are subject to intense pressure from human beings, livestock and urban markets. FD
officials argue that since commercial and industrial requirements are low as a proportion of the
total demand for wood, at less than 20 per cent (World Bank, 1988a: 26), people’s demands put
an unbearable burden on forests (Shyam Sundar, 1993). The almost continual lopping for
fuelwood and/or fodder as well as cattle and goat browsing that occur in many areas and
prevent adequate regeneration must play a major role in forest destruction (Blockhus et al.,
1992: 31).
On the other hand it is argued that giving industries priority and subsidized supplies has
reduced availability for the people and resulted in their further alienation from the forests,
turning them into an open access resource. Often the two processes of industrial extraction and
use by the people follow each other. The selective logging of a few large trees creates
openings in the crown cover leading to better grass production, which invites cattle and goats.
Their browsing makes regeneration difficult, and then the area is invaded by exotic, non-
palatable weed species.
Some authors (Bowonder et al., 1986; 1988) make a distinction between use of fuelwood by
rural people, which is largely twigs and branches and hence potentially sustainable, and by
urban sector. The greater use of logs and larger branches in the towns means that fair sized
trees are sought after and cut, possibly in large patches, thus having a more degrading effect
on the forest than may be the case with cutting for village needs, which can be met more often
from pruning or pollarding the branches of trees or even bushes in a limited area. Thus
collection of fuelwood for sale in urban areas is the cause of much destruction and degradation
of forests.
Industrial plantations
While the adverse effect of deforestation on local economies is well understood, the impact of
industrial plantations is not so well documented. Plantations are usually of single species,
equally entailing loss of diversity and of access, are often on a large scale, and in practice
hardly pursue an objective of benefiting the local people, beyond providing wages5.
5 Even wage employment becomes insignificant after the first year of plantation.
23
A plantation offers little of the product range of the old forests. In Ganjam district (Orissa), it
was noticed by the author in 1991 that due to the small area of the village woodlots, unlikely to
satisfy the fuelwood needs of the village, people continued to depend on nearby forest areas,
which were, however, being used by the Forest Corporation for timber and cash crops like teak
and cashew, thereby depleting the availability of fuelwood which could be gathered by the
people. Popular pressure, however, endangered the success of commercial plantations. It was
ironic that millions of Rupees were being spent to create new fuelwood resources through small
woodlots, while the existing much larger potential fuelwood areas on forest lands were being
diverted for non-fuelwood commercial plantations. It would have been cheaper to rehabilitate
the existing forests for the purpose of meeting people's demands. Unless creation of woodlots
and rehabilitation of nearby forests were both undertaken in an integrated manner with the
specific objective of satisfying people's needs, the long-term viability of village woodlots was in
doubt.
Rights and privileges
Rights and access which the people, especially tribals, earlier enjoyed, remain uncurtailed on
paper, but people are far from fully informed about what they can legally collect from forests,
and what is prohibited. There has hardly been any attempt by the FD to publicize peoples
rights; partly due to the fear that it would aggravate degradation, and partly due to the
administrative culture of the FD of keeping the people in dark. It suits traders and petty officials
if tribals are not aware that they are entitled to collect fuelwood. Uncertainty about rights
alienates the people from forest lands, and inhibits their participation in joint management.
6.4. Estimated Supply Potential
In addition to the existing production of 172.5 Mt of fuelwood, there is immense potential for
increasing production of fuelwood by afforestation of degraded lands. In some cases, such as
farm lands, fuelwood would perhaps be a by-product. The area where additional trees can be
planted without adversely affecting agricultural production fall into four categories:
Cultivated lands
The area available for agro-forestry and growing trees on cultivated lands is difficult to estimate.
All, or almost all, cultivated land can grow trees, and private tree planting depends on many
factors, such as complementarity with agriculture and opportunity costs of land and labour.
Degraded lands can give a lower boundary to any estimate, since on degraded lands trees
usually have the clearest advantages compared with other land uses. Bhumbla and Khare
(SPWD, 1984) estimated net sown land subject to wind and water erosion to be 38 million
hectares (m ha). Any figure is bound to be highly speculative, but we take the additional
potential of agroforestry on one third of the total degraded area, i.e. 13 m ha.
Strip lands
These include farm bunds and boundaries, roads, railway lines, canals and drains. The
Fuelwood Committee (Planning Commission, 1982) estimated the potentials of these as
follows: 60 of the 142 m ha of cultivated land presented scope for planting along bunds and
boundaries (which, at two per cent of the area, would amount to 1.2 m ha); and 1,224,000 km
of roads, 60,000 km of railway lines, 150,000 km of canals and 20,000 km of drains also
24
provided suitable strips, amounting to 0.9 m ha. The total strip land available was therefore in
the order of two m ha.
Degraded forest lands
The Forest Survey of India (FSI, 1993) has estimated that almost half of the forest area has a
crown density of less than 40 per cent. The National Wastelands Development Board's
estimate that 36 m ha out of the total of 67 m ha of forest land are degraded (NWDB,1988: 26)
and are therefore capable of growing additional trees which can provide fuelwood.
Uncultivated degraded land
Land statistics are well developed for cultivated and forest lands, but not for non-forest and
non-cultivated lands (Romm, 1981). Information needed for assessing their potential, like
ownership, extent and type of degradation, and present and possible future uses, has never
been collected on a systematic basis for the entire country. Elsewhere the author has estimated
that of the 55 m ha of the non-forest and non-cultivated degraded land, 33 m ha can be used
for growing trees (Chambers et al., 1989).
Thus the total availability of land in India where afforestation could be taken up is about 84 m
ha. Its ownership is shown in Table 12.
Assuming a low productivity of two Mt per ha per year of fuelwood (besides poles and timber
etc.) it would lead to additional production of 168 Mt, thus almost doubling the total availability
from 172.5 Mt to 340.5 Mt, besides creating decentralized employment for the poorest.
Why has this biological potential not been achieved? What have been the main constraints in
afforestation of the three categories of lands? This is briefly discussed in the next section.
7DEOH#45#=#2ZQHUVKLS#RI#GHJUDGHG#ODQG#DYDLODEOH#IRU#WUHH#JURZLQJ#+P#KD,
Category of
cultivable land Total area Available for trees
(for new
plantation)
Private Forest
Dept Revenue/
other depts
Cultivated 142 13 13 - -
Forest 67 36 - 36 -
Uncultivated/
non-forest 55 33 21 - 12
Strips Included in
the above 21- 1
Total 264 84 35 36 13
(Chambers et al.,1989)
25
7. GOVERNMENT PROGRAMMES IN THE LAST TWO DECADES
Fuelwood plantations on village and farm lands were undertaken as a result of the report of the
National Commission on Agriculture (GOI, 1976), which recommended growing trees to meet
subsistence needs on lands accessible to village people. In terms of sheer plantation of new
trees, the Social Forestry programme has been immensely successful. Between 1980 and
1987, the government claims to have raised 18,865 million trees (Chambers et al.
,
1989). Even
in the post-1990 period, about two m ha is claimed to be afforested annually through
government efforts (Kapur, 1991). This is by any standards an impressive achievement, and is
reflected in the steep fall in the price of poles and stabilization in the price of fuelwood after
1985 in some regions of India (World Bank, 1990).
However, this success was due to the popularity of farm forestry in commercial regions. Tree
planting on village lands, with some exceptions, failed to meet the people of the villages’
fuelwood requirements. The shortcomings in the way the programme was conceptualized and
implemented led to marked divergence between the stated objectives of Social Forestry and the
actual outcomes. Briefly these shortcomings were:
Local people were not involved, leading to high tree mortality;
Village
panchayats
(local elected councils) perceived the woodlots as sources of communal
income, rather than as sources of fuelwood to meet village needs. The nature of species
was also such that it tempted the panchayats to sell in the markets, rather than distribute in
the villages;
Panchayats could not enforce the discipline required for managing plantations;
Projects were designed around the ultimate felling of the planted trees, but degradation
often set in after the trees were harvested;
The targeted area under village lands could not be made available for afforestation because
of encroachment, competition from other departments, competition from grazing and other
existing local uses and poor productivity;
There was no continuity in the management and control of thousands of scattered pieces of
planted village lands, creating enormous problems of protection;
Projects failed to define, establish and publicize rights to the trees and the procedures for
marketing and allocating benefits. The shares which would go to individuals, villages,
panchayats and the Forest Department were not clearly laid down. Insecurity about benefits
led to indifference on behalf of the people.
Wood from farm forestry
The salient features of the farm forestry programme (USAID, 1988; World Bank, 1990; SIDA,
1990, Saxena, 1993) are:
26
More trees were planted in commercialized and surplus-producing agrarian regions than in
subsistence-oriented eastern states, despite the fact that rainfall and soil conditions were
more favourable to trees in the east rather than in the low rainfall (but irrigated) north-west.
Eucalyptus was the most favoured tree with the farmers, as it grew straight, had a small
crown and thus allowed more trees to be planted per unit of area, and caused little shading
when planted on field boundaries. It did not attract birds, was non-browsable – making it
easy to protect – and yielded straight poles which were perceived to have a good market.
Eucalyptus accounted for 71.6 per cent of all seedlings distributed under farm forestry
(IIPO, 1992).
Eucalyptus was planted more for sale as small timber, poles or pulpwood than for use as
fuelwood, although because of glut conditions it was often sold as fuel to brick kilns and
fuelwood depots.
And finally, farmers' enthusiasm to plant eucalyptus declined after 1988, as the tree failed to
generate the kind of returns farmers were expecting. The disenchantment stemmed from the
poor quality of produce from the eucalyptus, good enough only for fuelwood; the lack of
sufficient demand for poles and resulting steep decline in prices; the loss of agricultural
production due to plantation of the trees; and problems in marketing. Even when the trees
gained girth, timber from eucalyptus was found to be far inferior in quality and durability to other
timbers, and hence fetched a low price.
Much of the eucalyptus wood is now being sold as fuelwood at less than the expected price. As
fuelwood, the farmers' produce competes with wood supplies from government, and with coal
and petroleum products. These commodities have administered prices, and in relation to
fuelwood, the price of kerosene declined by 17 per cent, and of LPG gas by 100 per cent during
1970–84 in India (derived from prices quoted in Leach, 1987). It also competes with supplies of
fuelwood brought to the market by gatherers from public lands. In forest areas, fuelwood is sold
from forest depots at a subsidized rate. Because of this competition, fuelwood prices have
remained low since 1985. Thus farmers could not get the expected price for their output, and
further planting declined after 1988.
Subsidies exist not only for pulpwood supply to industries, but also for supply of fuelwood from
government forests, thus reducing incentives for farmers to produce fuelwood. For instance,
fuelwood markets and marketing in Orissa are quite complex. A three-tiered price system exists
– the heavily subsidized price applicable to rural people for their own use, the administered
price paid and charged by the Orissa Forest Corporation, and the free market price. The
situation is complicated further by a multiple supply system: headloaders, merchants,
contractors and the Corporation.
One effect of the subsidized prices is to create a very low-cost source of potential fuelwood,
priced at well below the cost of replacement of growing stock through investment in plantations.
As long as this source is available, growers are unlikely to be able to sell their trees as fuelwood
to middlemen, at a price that would be commensurate with the costs they have incurred.
The low value of fuelwood also means that in most situations it is likely to be a less profitable
crop for farmers than the growing of trees for sale of poles, construction timber, and fruit
(Dewees, 1989). It is likely that fuelwood production will be profitable only in a few special
27
situations – for example, on the agriculturally marginal sandy soils of the coast, close to
markets; or when the farmers can themselves sell directly to markets, so benefiting from the
much higher prices for the new product as compared with the price for the tree.
7.1. Fuelwood from Forest Lands
As regards the area of public lands available for planting of trees, Table 12 shows that as
compared to only 12 m ha of village lands there is three times this area of degraded forest lands.
Hence the main responsibility of meeting fuelwood needs has to come from forest lands. There is
plenty of sunshine, and adequate rainfall in most part of the country, due to which trees can grow
fairly fast. There are sufficient funds for the forestry sector, at least since 1980, thanks to
assistance from multilateral and bilateral donor agencies. Notwithstanding failures, funding for
this sector has continued on a liberal scale.
Fund availability for forest lands had become quite precarious during the Social Forestry phase.
As state funds have been locked into meeting the matching contributions required for external
assistance for projects on non-forest lands, forest lands got starved of funds, with several
adverse effects. The neglect of forest lands hurt forest dwellers and tribals, and they had to
travel even greater distances to collect fuelwood. It reduced timber supplies to the markets,
resulting in price escalation, which further increased smuggling from forest lands. Price
increases for both timber and fuelwood have been highest during the period 1975–85, as
compared to either before 1975 or after 1985.
The favourable biological potential and availability of financial support is buttressed by a change
after 1988 in the policy framework governing the management of forest lands, which is more
conducive to sustained development of woodfuel resources than the previous policies.
According to the new policy, the requirements, in terms of fuelwood, fodder and small timber, of
the tribals and other villagers living in and near the forest are now to be treated as first charge
on forest produce. Equity and environmental considerations will be given more weight than
mere earning of revenues.
Therefore social forestry in India should be extended to reserved and protected forest lands by
changing the nature of species from teak, eucalyptus and pine to usufruct and fuelwood
species. These should be supplemented with shrubs and bushes to yield fuelwood and fodder
in the shortest possible time. This would strengthen access of the poor and women to forests if
species suitable for individual gathering by households were planted, and benefits would go
directly to the poor.
An area of confusion in relation to forest lands has been as to what constitutes fuelwood
species. There are two different perspectives. For the foresters, fuelwood is obtained by felling
trees which have a high calorific value, or as lops and tops from timber trees. Casuarina and
eucalyptus, therefore, seem perfectly justifiable species on public lands. However, the poor
generally obtain their fuelwood from the twigs and branches of living trees, not by felling trees,
and in reality often get little from the felling of so-called fuelwood trees. Casuarina and
eucalyptus may be justified on farm lands if they improve farm incomes on a sustainable basis.
But raising them on public lands hardly benefits the poor.
Thus there would be a world of difference between the plantation of eucalyptus and of prosopis
on roadsides: eucalyptus really benefits urban markets and industry, whereas prosopis can not
28
only solve the fuelwood problems of poor families, but can also generate self employment for
the poor. Prosopis is a neglected tree in conventional forestry. Although the Forest Department
ignores it in social forestry projects, it grows naturally on degraded soil. Field studies made by
the author in dry areas with low employment opportunities in the slack season, like Anantpur in
Andhra Pradesh (CIDA,1988) and Mathura in UP (Saxena, 1989), show that prosopis has on its
own solved the fuelwood crisis, besides providing employment to many who prune the branches
and sell them in urban areas.
A study shows that its yield on degraded soils in Bhavnagar was as high as three tonnes per ha
per year (Patel, 1987). Prosopis produces double the biomass that eucalyptus does on similar
soils (Banerjee, 1986), and yet is considered by the Forest Department to be a low-value tree.
In the Central Board of Forestry papers (GOI, 1987) it has unfortunately been described as a
weed. One may recall that bamboo was also described as a weed until the first two decades of
this century, when its use in the paper industry was discovered, leading to bamboo cultivation
on a large scale.
Another way of looking at the issue of afforestation on forest lands is to opt for species which
have high proportions of branches and twigs relative to stem wood. Given the inefficiency of
administration and the `soft' character of the political system, one could generalize that from a
typical tree, the stem goes to the rich and the towns, while the branches and twigs belong to the
poor. The proportions of stem wood and branches calculated for some trees are presented in
Table 13.
The table indicates the superiority of prosopis to eucalyptus on the grounds of both equity and
of potential biomass per ha. But despite the Government of India's clear instructions to
discourage eucalyptus on public lands, its percentage in 1986–87 in UP on non-private lands
was still 21.2. Prosopis, on the other hand, accounted for only 1.8 per cent (IIPO, 1988: xiv),
though even on technical grounds it is a more suitable species for the saline/alkaline
wastelands of UP.
A further advantage of planting ‘trees of the poor’ (which are essentially employment-
augmenting trees as they require labour for gathering and collection, unlike trees which are
clear-felled) on forest and village lands is the likelihood of improved cooperation. People are
reluctant to protect trees which will be auctioned or felled, to the benefit of the government,
7DEOH#46=#3URSRUWLRQ#RI#VWHP#ZRRG#DQG#EUDQFKHV#LQ#WUHHV
Species Percentage in total biomass Total biomass in dry
tonnes/ha
Stem wood and bark Branches and twigs
Eucalyptus 81 19 17.4
Subabul 77 23 23.0
Acacia Nilotica 47 53 31.6
Prosopis Juliflora 30 70 32.2
(Reddy, 1987)
29
contractors and forest staff. They are much more likely to collaborate in the protection of trees
from which they, much more than others, are in a position to benefit. Protection by the people
and greening of degraded forests through regeneration (as opposed to artificial planting) would
reduce the overall cost of afforestation, so that more degraded area could be given over to
fuelwood production.
30
8. THE ROLE OF OTHER AGENCIES IN WOOD PRODUCTION
8.1. NGOs
There are a variety of NGOs working in India today, ranging from those organized for
immediate relief and charity to those that fight directly against entrenched interests, with
‘delivery system’ NGOs being the largest in number, aiming to offer more effective and
sensitive development and social services than the government provides. These NGOs show a
higher level of motivation and dedication, as well as creativity and innovation, than government
officials. They have far greater face-to-face interaction with local people. They are more
responsive to people’s aspirations, are more sensitive to equity and gender issues, and their
sanctions are based on consensus and social pressure rather than on coercion backed by state
authority. They have greater organizational flexibility and generally follow a more holistic
approach than is found in the sectoral, departmental government systems.
Several NGOs are active in India in the field of forestry, and there are many reasons for this.
Forestry concerns the subsistence needs of the poor, and hence attracts NGOs. It requires little
capital and as it takes place only on uncultivated lands, the opportunity cost of this economic
activity is minimal. Also, it is easy to get national and international funding for forestry-based
activities. However, no all-India survey has been done which would indicate the overall results in
terms of extra fuelwood of the efforts of these NGOs. There are, of course, micro-level studies
on the nature of the NGOs’ involvement in forestry. Below we describe the efforts of two NGOs,
one on forest and village lands and the other on private degraded lands.
Bruksha O Jeevar Bandhu Parisad, Orissa
Bruksha O Jeevar Bandhu Parisad (meaning ‘Friends of Trees and Living Beings’) has been
working since 1970 in about 300 villages of Nayagarh district, Orissa on land and forestry
issues. It has received several awards for its excellent work in raising awareness about
environmental issues and improving supplies of fuelwood through self-protection by the
villagers. Even when plantation has been raised by the FD, the NGO has helped the
government by motivating people to protect the planted area and refrain from illegal cutting.
Each village in the region where the NGO has been active had its own method of meeting its
domestic energy needs. The primary source of fuelwood was within the village boundaries.
Some hamlets/villages had demarcated certain areas, which included portions of village forest
and pasture land, for fuelwood collection. In some villages, while one area was being protected,
indiscriminate fuelwood collection was taking place in other parts of the village forest and
pasture land. Thus, while vegetation flourished in the one part, degradation continued in
adjacent patches. Often the village forest was seen as the property of the village whereas the
RF (reserve forests) belonged to the Department, so while protection of degraded village forest
was adopted, the well stocked RF was left as open access. As a result, this forest is in many
cases now reduced to open scrub vegetation (ODA, 1994).
This raises a question as to what happens with respect to fuelwood availability if the total area
around a village is protected? In such cases, the fuelwood pressure shifts to two other places.
First, to those distant reserved forests with good growing stocks which are managed without
community protection. Cycle-loads of fuelwood are illegally extracted everyday from such
reserve forests by people of those villages with only a very small and highly degraded, or even
31
none at all. Conflict has often emerged between cycle-loaders and the people of the villages
through which they generally pass. Cycle-load trading became a lucrative business as demand
for fuelwood increased and supply curtailed due to protection efforts in the cluster.
The second type of pressure shift has been to those PF (protected forests) and RF where the
village committees were found to be less effective in their protection activities. Lack of
effectiveness was due to internal conflicts, financial constraints and lack of leadership.
Equity issues
Leadership in village committees promoted by the NGO is with the richer households, which are
least dependent on the forest. Because of their relative status and authority, even NGOs who
initiate community protection have pragmatically sought their active involvement in forest
protection. To have such people on their committee was useful for dealing with other villages
and external authorities.
One particular problem area is those households which are wholly or partially dependent on the
collection and sale of firewood for income. Such people cannot stop cutting wood in forest
areas even after the introduction of forest protection in their area. Sometimes wood-cutting has
been displaced to more distant, unprotected forests. Often it has persisted in the same village,
albeit under continuing pressure to stop from the other members wishing to protect the forest in
question. In both cases, wood-cutting families are paying the costs of protection in increased
walking distances or in harassment and fines.
In one village, the idea of establishing a firewood plantation to meet the needs of wood cutters
was rejected on the grounds that the best firewood trees could not be grown in plantation. It
also seemed that the allocation of any special usage rights for forest areas to particular groups
would inevitably cause problems, because it would open up the possibility of other groups
making special private claims on common land.
In another village, a group of 35 to 40 potters who use wood to fire their pots are directly
dependent on the forest. It would be ideal if an area of land could be allocated for the use of
these potters, but this advice was rejected by the community in favour of a policy of total
protection. According to the potters, they need about three quintals of wood every month to fire
300 pots. Now they are having to purchase wood from the Corporation depot and collect
brushwood from a forest 10 km away. At the same time they are not obtaining enough wood to
maintain their past production levels. In this village, forest protection is not a win-win situation.
The basic issue is of the alternative livelihoods available to those dependent on the forest, and
that does not seem to have been addressed by the FD.
Gender issues
When women were asked for their preferences as regards tree species for plantation, a marked
difference was found between the better-off castes and the poorer
Harijan
(low-caste) women.
The better-off women expressed a preference for teak and
sal
trees, which can be used for
furniture, whereas the poor Harijan women preferred fuelwood and fruit-bearing trees. This was
for their own consumption and in some cases for sale. The better-off women, who have the
purchasing power to buy fuelwood, did not see the need to protect forests in order to meet their
fuelwood requirements.
32
Sadguru Water and Development Foundation, Gujarat
Sadguru Water and Development Foundation (SWDF), a local NGO, has been working in the
Panchmahals district of Gujarat state since 1976, in the predominantly tribal and poor talukas of
Dahod and Jhalod. Nearly all the tribal people are cultivators and the overwhelming majority
own land. There is very little landlessness. Most agriculture in the area is rainfed, with irrigation
covering only four to 10 per cent of cultivated land. As a result, most farmers are only able to
grow one crop a year, and the rest of the year sees heavy seasonal migration. SWDF's
objectives are to strengthen the livelihoods of poor tribals; make seasonal migration
unnecessary; and end poverty. Its main programme activities so far have been lift irrigation and
social forestry (Conroy, 1992).
SWDF initiated a social forestry programme in 1982, encouraging tree planting as an
appropriate land use system for private marginal land not well suited to agriculture. Eucalyptus
was the only species planted in 1982 and 1983, although since then SWDF has encouraged
participants to plant other species as well. In 1985, around one million of the 1.8 million
seedlings planted were eucalyptus. So far more than 28 million seedlings have been planted,
covering 28,167 acres of land and 24,075 families (SWDF, 1996). The survival rate is roughly
60 percent.
As the social forestry programme has been in existence for 14 years, it already has substantial
experience of how the earliest participants have used their trees. There are three principal
direct, regular uses: house construction, fuelwood and making agricultural implements. The
majority of people gave agricultural implements as their highest priority for use of wood,
followed by fuel, with house construction as the third priority. This seems to reflect the fact that
the first two uses are essential to survival, whereas a new or extended house may not be.
Eucalyptus was the species most commonly used for all three, though women ranked it highly
for use in roof construction and as fuelwood, but not for making ploughs. The most frequently
mentioned one-off needs were for funeral and marriage ceremonies. The programme has
helped increase the incomes of the tribals, as well as improving the availability, and hence
increasing consumption, of fuelwood.
8.2. Involvement of the Private Sector in Wood Production
According to the 1988 Forest Policy, forest-based industry should not depend on government
forests for its raw material supply, but should be asked to establish links with farmers, who will
produce the materials. In turn, industry should provide extension as well as offering a fair price
for the materials, which reflects production costs. With greater production of wood, lops and
tops could be used as firewood, while the main product would be consumed as industrial raw
material.
One success story is the linking of poplar growing farmers with a match factory in northern UP.
This experiment showed that, with technological back-up, timber-size trees could be raised on
farm lands within eight years. In fact, the farmers' enthusiasm for growing poplar has increased
supplies to such an extent that several plywood factories have been established in the area,
thus providing considerable downstream employment (Ghosh, 1994). In addition to plywood,
the paper industry can also get involved in farm forestry, as it demands eucalyptus and
bamboo, which are both short rotation crops and eminently suitable for the farm sector.
33
One paper company, ITC Bhadrachalam Paperboards Ltd in Andhra Pradesh, has been
distributing seedlings under a social forestry programme since 1982, and regular farm
forestry/agroforestry plantations were started in 1987. The project envisages the planting of
fast-growing tree species such as eucalyptus and casuarina on 1,500 ha of marginal
agricultural land, owned by individual farmers, in eight districts of Andhra Pradesh. Trees are
planted along field bunds, boundaries and irrigation channels in rows, and as blocks combined
with intercrops. ITC Bhadrachalam provides the supply of high-quality seedlings (from improved
stock), extension services, a buy-back guarantee for pulpwood, assistance in loan procurement,
and research and development support to farmers within the project. The project is eminently
successful, though its impact on fuelwood supplies is not documented (Lal et al., 1993).
There are a number of possible transitional problems in establishing links between industry and
farmers, and these have been noticed in the case of supplies of farmed eucalyptus to paper
mills. Firstly, many mills are designed for bamboo, and not for eucalyptus. Because of a
shortage of bamboo, the mills are closed, or running at low capacity, but are unable to use the
new supply of eucalyptus. Secondly, many mills requiring wood are located in the East and
South, where there are Forest lands and where eucalyptus plantations were first started on
Forest lands. However, the supply of eucalyptus in these forests is degraded, obliging the mills
to look elsewhere for the wood. For them to transport wood over a distance of more than 200
km from the North and West would be uneconomic, hence the paradox of abundant availability
of raw material in the North and West, and low-capacity operation of mills in the east and south
continues. A practical solution would be to split the processing units: to establish new pulp-
making plants close to farm forestry areas, and then transport the pulp to the mills.
Thirdly, buying small lots of wood from a large number of dispersed farmers requires the
establishment of a new marketing infrastructure, whereas paper mills like to get large-scale
consignments from forest depots. And lastly, it is not easy to obtain government permission to
move wood bought from private sources, as restrictions exist on transport of wood in many
states. But these are temporary problems and can be sorted out by the mills with the help of the
government.
The issue of the leasing of wastelands to industry for afforestation has been a raging
controversy in India in the last couple of years. One would whole-heartedly support the
involvement of industry in the reclamation of non-forest wastelands, such as the desert lands of
Rajasthan, the
bhal
(saline) lands of Gujarat, the ravines of MP and the saline lands of UP,
which are so degraded that they no longer support the livelihood needs of the poor. The total
area of such barren wastelands could be about 20 million ha, out of which one or two million ha
can easily be leased or sold to industry. These lands have the advantage of being available in
contiguous patches and hence amenable to economies of scale. However, several state
governments have in the past offered barren lands on lease to industry, but no interest was
shown.
There are also problems in extending this argument to degraded forest lands. Such lands may
have a low tree density, but satisfy the fuelwood and fodder needs of a large populace. In fact,
these lands are degraded because they suffer from extreme biotic pressure, and require neither
capital investment nor higher technology. Instead, they need protection and recuperation, which
can be done only by working with the people, where industry has neither expertise nor patience.
Secondly, if industry produces its own raw materials, who would the farmers sell to? Where is
their market, if not industry? Sixty per cent of farm land is owned by affluent farmers, who are
market oriented and can be trusted to fulfil the requirements of industry. Since the overall
34
demand of industry is limited, if it were allowed to be met by leasing, it would adversely affect
the farm forestry programme, which is one of the cheapest and most sustainable methods of
producing wood. More production of pulpwood in the farm sector would also increase the
availability of fuelwood, which could then be consumed or sold.
8.3. Wood Production in the Cooperative Sector
In addition to NGOs and the private sector, there are many cooperatives which are encouraging
farmers to plant trees on their degraded lands. The oldest and most successful is the Nashik
District Eucalyptus Growers' Cooperative Society in Maharashtra, conceived in 1983, which was
the first of its kind in India. The cooperative was organized primarily to cater to the needs of
less-privileged farmers in terms of availability of irrigation facilities. Most farmers, with uncertain
labour availability and markets for seasonal agricultural crops, needed an alternative to the
conventional agricultural cropping pattern which could ensure economic returns in a short
period. With the goal of quick financial relief to farmers, the cooperative started cultivation of
fast-growing trees like eucalyptus on rotations of five and six years. Eucalyptus had the
advantage of coppicing well and efficiently using limited water resources to produce maximum
biomass. Eucalyptus has an assured market in the pulp and paper industry, and can be made
into many other products, including posts, poles, firewood, charcoal and particleboard.
Any farmer can become a member of the Society in Nashik district by paying a fee of Rs 1000
per acre. By amendment of the relevant by-laws, this fee was relaxed for poor farmers who
found it beyond their capacity. For them, the amount was reduced to Rs 50 per acre, enabling
the poor farmer to secure membership in the society.
The Society now includes 2,413 farmers in Nashik district, and eucalyptus trees have been
planted on 4,216 ha. It organizes supply of planting materials to farmers in collaboration with
the State Forest Department and the Social Forestry Department. It also provides farmers with
technical guidance regarding eucalyptus cultivation.
For three years, the Society has organized harvests of five-to-seven-year-old eucalyptus trees.
Farmers are advised not to harvest if the trees are not mature enough, but the final decision is
left to each farmer. Once the decision to harvest is made, the Society and farmer agree on a
date for felling. On that day, the Society's specially trained team of farm workers conducts the
harvesting operation. The number and size of poles are recorded in the field. The poles are
then transported to the Society's sales depot. There the poles are categorized according to
length and girth classifications, with each class placed in separate lots. The poles are sold at
prices fixed by the Society for each length and girth class. Since 1988–89, the Society has
evolved a system of marketing. During the first year, sales of eucalyptus poles amounted to 1.2
million Rs. During 1989–90, the poles fetched a total of 4.5 million Rs.
35
9. ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF WOOD AND FUELWOOD UNDER
DIFFERENT PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
Output and financial results from wood growing projects depend on many factors, such as soils,
climate, moisture, species and technology. But the most important factor is protection. On
private lands it is usually moderate to good, and hence the cost of protection can be controlled
or predicted, but on public lands lack of protection is often a major weakness. This makes it
easy to quantify economic results from wood growing on private lands, but much harder on
public lands.
As survival and protection of the trees vary due to factors beyond the control of the Forest
Department, output from similar lands and similar investments can vary by a factor of as much
as 10, so isolated examples of cost-benefit analysis can be misleading. Some production
results are even derived from laboratory conditions, without the field problems of cattle and
human pressure, meaning that they are not replicable. In other words, a study of factors
impinging on the long-term survival of plants on public lands may be more useful than a cost-
benefit analysis in which protection cost is calculated by multiplying the number of hired workers
by their wage rates. While discussing the financial results of obtaining fuelwood from forest
lands, we have kept the above precaution in mind.
9.1. Wood from Forest Lands
Compared to village lands, degraded forest lands have better root stock and soil structure, and
therefore the dependence of local populations on them is higher. To what extent people would
permit a fuelwood plantation on forest lands to succeed depends on several factors.
According to Ostrom (1994), the reasons why different groups cooperate by not over-grazing or
illicit felling while others do not are linked to both internal and external factors. The internal
variables include the total number of decision makers; inter-dependence among the
participants; the discount rate or risk perceptions of the group; similarities of interest;
leadership; information about expected benefits and costs; and shared norms and
opportunities. The external variables are related to government policies, especially regarding
security of tenure. If governments are able to create exclusive rights over forest produce for a
given group, people in that group may forgo immediate consumption in favour of better yields in
the future. Blueprint thinking (that is, imposition of uniform solutions to a wide variety of local
problems), over-dependence on external sources of help, and corruption or other forms of
opportunistic behaviour on the part of external agencies are likely to cause threats to the
sustainable community governance of common property resources.
During the period of protection, people have to limit extraction to allow for sustained supply in
future. This may mean that additional labour is spent in the short run on collecting fuelwood
from further away. Also, participation entails the enforcement of rules and regulations, which
also requires labour. In the cost-benefit analysis, it is therefore necessary to ensure these costs
are taken into account and covered by the eventual return.
36
Such benefits will in turn depend upon:
Future wood yield – rate of growth of trees, unit value, gestation period;
Annual harvest of twigs and branches and other NTFPs – biological productivity, unit value;
Amount of effort required to get fuelwood and other products, ease in gathering;
Marketing infrastructure for wood and NTFPs; and
Alternatives available for household labour in agriculture, non-farm employment, migration
etc.
Costs and benefits from protection will not be uniform for all concerned, and may differ from
situation to situation. In particular, some vulnerable groups, such as headloaders, women,
graziers and the landless poor, are in danger of losing their livelihoods or means of sustenance
when protection of a degraded forest begins.
A study (Femconsult, 1995) of the impact of protection on various groups in a Gujarat village
calculated the net worth of the benefits from protection at 12 per cent discount rate over a
period of 30 years, and compared it with another village under departmental plantation where
protection by the people had not been undertaken. The results are shown in Table 14.
The overall gains to the village are thus tremendous. This is primarily because the village
forest had valuable teak as the main species. When a similar calculation was done in a
West Bengal village with sal as the main species and where villages get 25 per cent
share in the final harvest as opposed to 50 per cent in Gujarat, the corresponding gains
were much less. In both cases, headloaders emerged as the biggest losers. In the latter
7DEOH#47=#(FRQRPLF#JDLQV9#IURP#SURWHFWLRQ#FRPSDUHG#ZLWK#QRQ0SURWHFWHG#VLWXDWLRQ
Beneficiary Net worth in 000 Rs at 12% for 30 years
With
protection Without
protection Increment % change
Revenue to the village 2,242 0 2,242 -
Employment
Headloaders
Livestock owners
NTFP collectors
Net in kind
562
108
611
1,270
2,551
0
583
608
240
1,431
562
-475
3
1,029
1,120
-
-81
0
429
78
Total benefit to the village 4,793 1,431 3,362 235
6 These have been calculated on the assumption that protection in the JFM village will continue by the people
throughout the 30-year cycle. This in itself will depend on a number of variables. However, no account has been
taken of these factors while calculating the economic returns, making the conclusions somewhat suspect. The
inadequacy of this type of economic analysis is apparent from the fact that JFM is more successful in West Bengal
than Gujarat, though the financial analysis given here suggests otherwise.
37
case, graziers and gatherers of NTFPs also lost, as closing of forest canopy led to
reduced grass and
tendu
production. Often in sal forests, leaf sweeping needs to be
controlled in order to induce regeneration. This too hits women and the poor. Failure to
compensate losers may disrupt the consensus over protection, and thus one would need
income-generating programmes for them until the trees mature.
Integration of protection with other rural development programmes may be necessary
even in villages which are homogeneous in nature. A study (SPWD, 1992: 40) of an
NGO-inspired JFM initiative in Gujarat noted that a major reason for success was the
existence of many complementary activities alongside JFM, such as:
Biogas installation under the Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation’s scheme;
A fodder plot programme, under which green fodder was provided and villagers were
able to stop open grazing in forests;
Village nurseries under DRDA were started in order to create peripheral plantations;
and
Homestead garden scheme was adopted under the Tribal Area Sub Plan.
Thus whether protection will succeed, and where, may often depend on other rural
development programmes or on efforts made to increase the productivity of land other
than degraded forests: private lands, non-forest village commons and forests remote
from villages. If programmes to make these lands productive are taken up simultaneously
with or prior to protection, they may meet the employment and income needs of the
people during the period they are required to reduce their consumption of fuelwood etc.
from specific forests.
9.2. Wood from Non-forest Public Lands
The area available in this category of land for wood production has been estimated in
para 6.4. Being close to habitation, such lands are also subject to human and cattle
pressure, the implications of which for long-term sustainability have been considered
above. In addition, these lands are more degraded than forest lands, and to increase
their productivity would often require investments in irrigation and soil improvements in
addition to the normal costs of seedlings, plantation and protection. Reclamation costs
and yields were estimated for non-forest wastelands by the Agriculture Finance
Corporation in 1986 as shown in Table 15.
Thus an investment of 9,000 to 15,000 Rs per ha (at 1987 prices) would increase the
productivity from almost nil at present to between four and eight Mt (or six to 12 m3 ) per
38
7DEOH#48=#&RVW#RI#UHFODPDWLRQ#RI#ZDVWHODQGV#DV#HVWLPDWHG#E\#WKH#$JULFXOWXUH#)LQDQFH#&RUSRUDWLRQ=#FRVWV/
VSHFLHV#DQG#\LHOG
Name of district Area of
waste
land in ha
Cost per
ha (Rs) Main species proposed Av. yield in
Mt/ha/year
1. Chittoor
(Andhra Pradesh) 500 10,100 Eucalyptus, subabul, teak,
bamboo, mango and grasses 8
2. Srikakulum
(Andhra Pradesh) 600 9,600 Eucalyptus, subabul, cashew and
casuarina 6–8
3. Surat (Gujarat) 1,251 8,600 Eucalyptus, subabul, teak and
bamboo 4–6
4. Sabarkantha
(Gujarat) 976 8,900 Same as above plus prosopis
juliflora 4–6
5. Hassan
(Karnataka) 400 10,300 Mango, sapota, eucalyptus,
casuarina and tamarind 5–7
6. Meerut (UP) 625 15,000 Poplar, eucalyptus, babul,
sheesham, mulberry 4–8
7. Raibareli (UP) 434 13,500 Prosopis juliflora 6–7
(NWDB,1988)
ha per year, which is eight to 16 times higher than the present productivity of government
forests7.
The ratio of yields to costs of planting trees on farm bunds, roadsides and canal banks would
be much more favourable, as they generally have good moisture and are more productive than
revenue wastelands. The costs of planting trees in 1988 in various state social forestry projects,
at Rs 4,000 to 8,000 per ha including overheads, have also been lower than the average for the
AFC reclamation projects. The impact of such an investment on fuelwood availability and
employment would be tremendous.
The most cost effective way of producing fuelwood is from those wastelands which have
already been infested with coppicing shrubs such as prosopis, where the cost of plantation and
replacement is almost zero. Production here requires only human labour, and marketing costs
are confined to transport. We consider an example below.
A study was conducted in Raichur district in Karnataka to investigate the economics of the
cutting from public lands and selling of prosopis wood as fuel. Almost all landless and many
small farmers were engaged in this activity, cutting fuelwood and transporting it in their own
carts to the nearest market. The average number of family members involved over a year was
7 For forest lands, two varying estimates of current productivity are vailable. On the basis of remote sensing data,
Warner(1982) estimates current productivity for the entire 67 million ha of forests at 0.4 m3 of wood per ha per year.
However, the Forest Survey of India (FSI, 1988: 31) estimateda productivity of 0.7 m3 in 1985. The FSI estimate
includes both recorded and unrecorded removals from forests, and hence would seem the more accurate.
39
7DEOH#49=#5HWXUQV#IURP#JDWKHULQJ#SURVRSLV#SHU#IDPLO\#SHU#\HDU
Item Cost/Return in Rs
Actual expenses incurred
Municipality fee 128
Misc. expenses (snacks and tea at market, repairs etc.) 600
Total paid out cost 728
Returns obtained*
Av. quantity of wood sold (no. of cartloads) 64
Av. price/cartload of wood sold 152
Gross returns 9711
Profit over paid out cost 8983
Net return over paid out cost/family/man-day 17
Employment provided/adult family member (man-days/year) 250
The average price per cartload is actually 151.74, and therefore the gross returns are 151.74 x 64 = 9711
(Hugar et al., 1989)
2.1, and the total number of mandays per family engaged in the activity every year was 522.
The returns and employment generation on a per family basis per year are given in Table 16.
It was observed that the people involved in cutting and selling of prosopis, on average, sold 64
cartloads in a year, each containing about five quintals, at the rate of Rs 152 per cartload, by
engaging about 522 mandays of family labour. The net returns accrued to a family engaged in
the activity worked out to be Rs 17 (8,983/522) per manday, which was far above the off-
season agricultural wage rate of six Rs per day in that area at the time of the study (1988).
Owing to the absence of land as well as their poor asset position, people engaged in the activity
were denied institutional finance, making them resort to private money lenders for credit to
secure bullocks, bullock carts and other materials. The majority of the people also complained
that they were committed to selling their wood to a wholesale-cum-retailers at the price quoted
by him, in view of the advance received. These problems need attention.
9.3. Cost-benefit Analysis of Eucalyptus on Farm Lands
The cost of establishing energy plantations on private lands depends on several parameters,
such as soil type, water source, climate, labour, etc. It has been estimated that in 1989 the cost
of raising plantations, from nurturing seedlings in the nursery to transplanting them into the
fields to maintaining the plantation for a rotation cycle of five years, ranges from Rs 10,000 to
Rs 13,000 per hectare. A conservative estimate of the biomass yield from one hectare of
irrigated plantation is about 15 tonnes per year. Thus a one-hectare plantation, on a five-year
cycle, can yield 75 tonnes of biomass, which at a rate of Rs 500 per tonne could fetch Rs
37,500 in five years, against an initial investment of Rs 10,000.
40
These are, however, theoretical estimates only. For better estimation one must look at field
results. A large number of studies are available on the results of cost-benefit analyses of trees
planted on farm lands. Fuelwood in such cases is generally a by-product, and the main product
is pole or pulpwood. As the results depend on species, soil and region, for the sake of
comparability we summarize the results on eucalyptus planted on irrigated soils in NW India in
Table 17.
These studies suffer, however, from a number of infirmities. Apart from the fact that none of the
studies in Table 17 explains the methodologies used adequately, there are other problems in
accepting the results of these studies. First, high returns from bund plantations should not have
led to a decline in planting levels in that area. Second, the data in many studies (Mathur et al.,
1984; Chatterjee, 1985; World Bank, 1988b) do not seem to emanate from actual farm
conditions, as the figures for both yield and returns have been taken from government
plantations. Such studies are, at best, ex-ante analyses, although they do not admit to be so.
Third, the year of field work has often not been mentioned, making it difficult to relate the high
price per tree given in the study with the actual field conditions prevailing in northern India after
1987.
Despite these serious flaws, it appears that the financial results from block planting were not as
good as from bund planting. For instance, Chatha et al. (1991) found bund plantation extremely
profitable in the Punjab, but for block plantings the same study estimated net annual returns as
only Rs 2,500 per ha, where field crops would have yielded Rs 10,000 per ha on a similar plot
(both figures being undiscounted). This difference may be partly due to the bund trees claiming
better access to sunlight and water, but in most cases of bund plantations given in Table 17,
the assumption behind the financial analysis needs to be questioned. These studies have either
ignored the effect of eucalyptus on field boundaries on crop production (Mathur et al.
,
1984;
Singh, 1988; World Bank, 1988b; Chatha et al.
,
1991), or have categorically denied that there is
a loss. Later research (Suresh et al., 1987; Shah, 1988; Ahmed, 1989; Chaturvedi, 1989; Malik
and Sharma, 1990; Shukla, 1991) has conclusively proved that eucalyptus causes crop loss,
which needs to be taken into account while calculating financial results.
The author’s own research (Saxena, 1991) on bund planting of eucalyptus in western UP
showed that the variability in density of trees, wood output and other indices was quite large, as
indicated by the standard deviation in Table 18. We found that even for similar spacing, tree
girth and crop losses have varied a great deal, presumably because of the genetic deterioration
in the status of
E. hybrid
, the uneven quality of seedlings, or the nature of the species itself.
As the B-C ratio was never less than one, all farmers were better off after planting eucalyptus,
although results were not as promising as other studies showed. Farmers were disappointed
with the meagre profits as they were expecting heavy windfalls from planting of eucalyptus. One
of the reasons for low profits perhaps lies in the nature of markets, which is discussed in the
following chapter.
41
7DEOH#4:=#6XPPDU\#RI#ILQDQFLDO#DQDO\VLV#RI#HXFDO\SWXV#SODQWDWLRQV#RQ#IDUPV#LQ#1:#,QGLD;
Author State Type Density
per ha Space
(in m) Expenses
per plant
(Rs)
Age at
felling
(years)
Weight
per tree
(kg)
Price per
tree (Rs) IRR B-C
Mathur et al. (1984) UP bund 200 - 4.6 8 - 90 - 7.2 at 15%
Chatterjee (1985) UP " 200 2 0.1 - - 100 Add’l profits were
Rs 1507/ha; add’l
investment only
Rs 12
World Bank
(1988b) UP " 200 - 0.4 4-6 - 90-100 ERR was 100%
Ahmed (1989) Haryana " 250 1.8 2.2 8 190 94 47%, 9.0 at 15%
Chatha et al.
(1991) Punjab " - 2.5 1.1 - - 13 - 10 at 0%
Mathur et al.
(1984) UP block - 4 x 2 - 8 - 90–100 96% -
Singh (1988) Haryana " 2023 - 13.0 8 - 58 - 3.3 at 12%
World Bank
(1988b) UP " 4000 - 0.7 4–6 - 90–110 ERR was 100%
Rawat (1989) UP " 2000 4 x
1.25 4.4 8 30–35 25 27% 1.2 at 12%
Aulakh (1990) Punjab " 1200 3 x 3 11.0 10 100 20 Loss as
compared to
annual crops
Chatha et al.
(1991) Punjab " 1900 - 0.7 7 50 19.6 Loss as
compared to
annual crops (Saxena, 1994)
8 Undiscounted, does not include harvest and post-harvest expenses; ERR = Economic rate of return.
42
7DEOH#4;=#0HDQ/#VWDQGDUG#GHYLDWLRQ#DQG#UDQJH#RI#NH\#YDULDEOHV#+1# #5;,
Variable Mean Std dev Minimum Maximum
1. Land owned (ha) 5.87 3.27 38 13.33
2. Annual crop production/ha (Rs) 13231 3174 8540 20349
3. Space between trees (m) 1.41 0.65 0.3 3.0
4. Density trees per ha 219 207 21 800
5. Survival of plants in % 76.38 12.53 50 100
6. Width of loss in the 4th year and after (m) 5.18 2.33 2 10
7. Direct expenses per plant (Rs) 1.52 0.79 0.56 3.60
8. Crop loss per tree during the entire rotation
(Rs) 8.23 4.16 1.50 15.6
9. Value of twigs (Rs) per farmer 267.36 201.62 0 722
10. Sale price/tree (Rs) 45.20 19.85 10.0 100.0
11. BC-ratio 1.79 0.87 1.01 4.63
Note: Rupee values have been discounted for the year of planting of trees at 15 per cent for items 7 and 8, while
undiscounted values have been shown for items 2, 9, and 10.
43
10. FUELWOOD MARKETS
Wood markets in India have not been studied systematically so far. On the other hand,
agricultural markets and their role in rural welfare have been widely discussed. It is now
generally agreed that farming systems and production conditions vary a great deal from region
to region in India, and so does the level of information among the peasantry, their political clout,
and infrastructure for marketing. Markets in eastern regions, which are paddy growing and
subsistence-oriented, are relatively underdeveloped as compared to markets in the
commercialized wheat or cash crop growing regions (Kahlon and Tyagi, 1983). Markets in NW
India are considered to be competitive, sensitive to the laws of supply and demand, and
efficient (Von Oppen et al.
,
1979). Thus it is reasonable to expect that wood markets in different
regions would also behave differently.
However, there are fundamental differences between agricultural products and wood products.
We discuss below the main points of divergence between the two products.
Diversity of use
As already stated in Section 1, wood is a heterogeneous material and is capable of giving
multiple products. For instance, for eucalyptus, the thickest portion of the trunk can be used as
timber, if the girth of the trunk, with bark, is more than 70 cm. Poles are used for scaffolding
support and as roofing material. The dimensions of logs for use as poles should be three to six
metres in length, and 30 to 70 cm in girth. Cut pieces of similar girth but shorter in height are
used as pulpwood in paper mills. All smaller pieces, twigs, bark, and roots, which cannot be
used elsewhere, are used as fuelwood. Thus there is no single wood market, conceptually and
spatially, in a town. The structure and conduct of each market differs from others depending
upon species, and the purpose of use of wood.
Processing
Unlike foodgrains, no processing of wood takes place on the farm, in the household or by the
panchayats. Trees are generally sold in situ, or brought to the market without any processing,
which increases the dependence of wood producers on middlemen. For use as fuelwood, wood
is split into convenient, smaller pieces, either manually with an axe at the fuelwood depot, or at
a sawmill for use in brick kilns. Thus, processing takes place at the retail point.
Competition with government produce
Third, unlike agricultural products which are supplied only from private farms, the government is
a big supplier of wood. In fact, until the harvesting of social forestry plantations started in the
mid-1980s, the government had a substantial share in the supply of woodfuel, both formally and
informally through gathering. Considerations of prevention of theft from government forests led
to the imposition of a number of controls on free marketing of woodfuel, which have inhibited
the growth of wood markets.
44
Bulk consumers of eucalyptus
In matters of consumption, too, woodfuel has some peculiarities. For foodgrains, most
consumption is restricted to households. For woodfuel, in addition to households and small
establishments, there are bulk consumers, such as tile manufacturers and brick kilns, who buy
fuelwood.
These and many other issues of government policy have influenced the evolution of woodfuel
markets, which determine the flow of wood and the incomes of farmers (Saxena, 1991).
Market information
Evaluation studies of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Social Forestry Projects showed that very few
farmers were aware of market conditions and the price they could expect for their product
(SIDA, 1988; ODA, 1989). Ignorance was more rampant among the smaller than among the
larger farmers (ILO, 1988). Even those who had harvested and sold some of their produce were
not sure whether they had got the right price for it. For agricultural crops, such as groundnut,
local newspapers published prices daily, but there was no such mechanism for fuelwood (FAO,
1988). These studies give the impression that whereas in a competitive and efficient market
information should circulate freely, for marketing of fuelwood, farmers' and panchayats’
awareness about buyers and the prevailing market price was weak.
Market access
Only a few farmers brought their wood produce to the markets. In most cases, the standing
wood crop was sold to the middlemen or contractors, who then arranged to fell the trees,
graded them, made payment to the farmers, and took it to the market (ORG, 1990a; Chatha et
al., 1991). In Rajasthan, where there is no paper mill, and poles are generally imported from
Haryana, small farmers found that there were no buyers for eucalyptus trees, whereas the
large-scale farmers, with 10,000 or more trees to sell, had to locate buyers from other states
through newspaper advertisements (USAID, 1990). Thus, farmers did not have a choice of
many buyers, whereas in a competitive and efficient system there are large numbers of buyers
and sellers.
Number of intermediaries
Between the producers and retailers there were about three to four layers of intermediaries. In
West Bengal, marketing was done through a three-tier hierarchy of middlemen, called agents,
merchants and wholesalers. Sometimes, there are large agents between village agents and
merchants, thus increasing the number of middlemen to four (IMRB, 1989a). Similarly, in
Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, the village contractor makes an advance payment to the farmer, and
buys his produce on maturity. The contractor in turn sells wood to a commission agent, who
charges four per cent commission on sale. The produce reaches the retailers from the
commission agents via another category of middlemen, called subagents (IMRB, 1989b). For
fuelwood in Hyderabad, which originates from the Forest Department, there are three
middlemen between the Department and consumer: the forest contractor, commission agent,
and the retailer (Dunkerley and Gopi, 1985).
45
Farmers in western UP, who are politically more aware than in subsistence regions, have been
following several marketing channels for eucalyptus, the important ones being:
1. Farmer–direct to brick kiln or paper mill
2. Farmer–village agent–paper mill
3. Farmer–village agent–sawmill–brick kiln
4. Farmer–village agent–fuelwood depot–consumer
5. Farmer–village agent–sawmill–partly to furniture maker and rest to fuelwood depot
6. Farmer–village agent–commission agent–sawmill–brick kiln
A farmer's share in the final price paid by the consumer would vary in each case (if only
because of the costs of breaking bulk). A significant part of the farm produce was disposed of
through routes three and four above, each involving only two intermediaries, while in many
cases the number of intermediaries was even less than two. In some cases farmers took the
produce themselves to a brick kiln or the paper mill. In many cases of route three, the sawmill
and the brick kiln were owned by the same individual and established at the same site, thus
further reducing the number of intermediaries.
Marketing margins
One of the ways to measure efficiency of wood markets is to estimate the difference between
the retail price and the price obtained by the farmers, and to determine whether the existing
margins are excessive in relation to the costs of services rendered. In Haryana the prevailing
market price for fuelwood in 1989 was Rs 250 to 300 per tonne, whereas farmers got Rs 120–
150 a tonne for fuelwood-sized trees. The difference was more pronounced in the case of
timber-sized trees, for which the farmers got only Rs 220–230 per tonne, as against a market
price of Rs 600–750 per tonne (Athreya, 1989).
In a study of fuelwood markets in Hyderabad, where wood came from government forests, it
was calculated that the final price paid by the consumer consisted of the following components:
Price to Forest Department 18
Transport 25
Middlemen's margins 57
Total 100
46
Thus middlemen’s margins were quite high. However, the same may not be true of areas where
markets are well developed. In a study of farmers' disposal of eucalyptus from the western UP
region, the gross margin of all intermediaries was worked out to be Rs 82 per tonne (Singh and
Gill, 1988). Another study of the entire state of UP calculated the trade margins in farm
eucalyptus as 19–23 per cent of the price paid to the farmer (ORG, 1990b). Further, in none of
the transactions in western UP did farmers take loans from traders. Thus, inter-locking of
capital and output markets, a characteristic of eastern India, was not a feature of western UP
wood markets. Many of the farmers selling eucalyptus were first-time sellers. It was also seen
that farmers' information about market practices and their confidence in negotiating with traders
improved with experience. Those who had already sold trees were more knowledgeable and
had better access to markets.
Restrictions on free trade
In order to protect forest wealth from pilfering, many state governments have imposed
restrictions on the movement of wood from farm lands. In UP, farmers required a transit permit
up to 19919 if they wished to transport eucalyptus. Permission is also required in many states
for harvesting and felling a tree. Sometimes, as in Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, the product
can be sold only to a designated government agency. These rigid rules are designed to prevent
illicit felling from government forests, but they also act against the interests of producers, as
they form a barrier between the producers and the market, and bring uncertainty in the
operation of sale transactions. This set of laws has been the single most important factor
behind the unpopularity of farm forestry programmes. Even when some laws were liberalized,
the changes were not publicized, with the result that harassment continued as usual.
In West Bengal it was noticed that the system of obtaining a permit for felling trees was time-
consuming and involved bribes. The movement of an application through various channels was
as follows:
Application----> village panchayat and the pradhan----> standing committee consisting of the
BDO, range officer and some elected members----> range officer----> local land reforms officer
to verify ownership of land----> the range officer to estimate the value of the plantation (this
decides who in the forest hierarchy would issue the permit)----> the buyer to make an affidavit,
and obtain a court order----> now the buyer can cut trees, and apply to the range officer for a
transit permit----> the range officer (or his superior, depending upon the value of plantation) to
inspect and hammer the trees, and then issue the transit pass.
What added to the harassment of agents, and consequently to the low prices paid to farmers,
was the fact that the officials involved were located in different places, and hence agents had to
approach several offices for clearance.
In Tamil Nadu too, restrictions on movement of wood are a major irritant. It takes three months
to obtain a permit, in which time wood tends to lose weight. Many producers would like to
market their trees themselves, and so would large urban merchants, but both have to depend
on middlemen because of the permit problem. This increases the gap between producer price
and the market price.
9 The law was amended in 1991 freeing farm eucalyptus from transit regulations.
47
Under the Bihar Forest Produce (Regulation of Trade) Act, 1984, farmers can sell wood to the
State Trading Organization only, and all sales in the markets are considered illegal. A study
revealed that getting permits from government often required interventions from ministers, and
sometimes even such recommendations did not expedite sales.
In many states it is very difficult to obtain a new license for operating a sawmill, as the state
governments consider sawmills responsible for deforestation. There are many mills which
operate without licenses. This causes uncertainty in the operation of the processing units and
increases corruption.
10.1. Different Categories of Traders in Western UP
In any given market, firms trading in wood are likely to be economically and socially diverse.
Table 19 describes the different type of agents found operating in wood markets in western UP
(north-west India), and their characteristics. The traders dealing mainly in fuelwood are
generally different from those dealing in more expensive species. The latter are generally well-
established and large traders, with access to capital, education and the bureaucracy. There is a
good deal of grading and processing to be done in wood from species like mango, sissoo and
teak, which increase their value at each step. These are sawn into rounds and flats, and then
used for making furniture. They are also used in plywood and veneer factories. The finished
products are stored for long periods and are transported far and wide, sometimes more than
1,500 km. These products have an all-India market. On the other hand, the poorer traders, such
as village agents, fuelwood depots and some commission agents, are involved in fuelwood.
This requires little processing – its final use is either in brick kilns, small restaurants or
households, so it is not important for the logs to be straight, smooth or free of knots. Because
value addition was little, quick turnover of capital was possible. These characteristics suited the
small traders.
Entry Barriers to Trade
Licenses are required from the Market Committee, the Forest Department, the Forest
Corporation and the Municipal Corporation for conducting business. As in the foodgrain trade,
many functionaries in the wood trade combine in themselves several roles, and hold different
kinds of licenses.
As a result of a high degree of specialization, and thus of asset specificity, in western UP wood
markets there is a high degree of repeat and relational trading among different traders dealing
in timber and poles – wholesalers, sawmillers, carpenters and retailers – both in supply of
material and of credit, with the result that it is almost impossible for a newcomer to start in the
timber trade if others do not permit. The traders learn skills, gained experience and established
contacts with others in the trade as apprentices first, before launching their own independent
enterprises. The inter-dependency is stronger if there are caste or communal linkages between
48
7DEOH#4<=#&KDUDFWHULVWLFV#RI#GLIIHUHQW#W\SHV#RI#ZRRG#WUDGHUV#LQ#ZHVWHUQ#83
Timber
wholesalers
Saw millers Commission
agents
Retailers Village agents Fuelwood depots
Interest in farm eucalyptus Nil Marginal Medium to high High High High
Main species Teak, sissoo
imported sal,
government
eucalyptus
Same as
wholesalers,
mango, farm
eucalyptus
All, including farm
eucalyptus Sawn wood and farm
eucalyptus Mango and farm
eucalyptus Farm eucalyptus
and mixed wood
Source of capital Banks Banks and informal Banks and informal Informal Informal Informal
Education High Average Average Low Low Low
Social status High Average Average Average Low Low to average
Religion/caste High-caste Hindus
and Muslims Mixed Mostly Muslims Muslims or low-caste
Hindus Muslims or low-
caste Hindus Muslims
Location of business Urban towns Large and small
towns Urban towns Large and small
towns Small towns and
villages Large and small
towns
Main source of raw material Forest Corporation,
imports Wholesalers,
village agents Village agents,
farmers Village agents,
farmers, saw millers Farmers Village agents,
millers,
commission
agents,
headloaders
Annual turnover in Rupees 0.2 to 2 million 0.1 to 0.5 million 0.1 to one million 50,000 to 500,000 20,000 to 100,000 20,000 to 100,000
Change in number in last five years Declined Increased Increased Increased Increased Same or declined
49
different sections of the trade. Social ascription facilitates entry, as money is often borrowed
from family sources, or from the firms where apprenticeship was obtained. For instance, in
Jaspur market, which specializes in processing eucalyptus wood as timber, almost all traders
are Muslims. Muslim entrants in this market have the advantage of training within the family in
assessing the quality of wood, and of access to other traders. A few Hindu and Sikh traders
who have attempted entry have ultimately sold out to Muslims. Collaboration between different
sections of the trade dealing in timber and poles is on both a professional and a social basis,
which discriminates against socially unfamiliar new entrants.
By contrast, village agents have traditional links with other traders operating in the town,
involving exchange of goods on credit. Their number has greatly increased, and many relations
of commission agents and retailers have started visiting villages to negotiate with farmers.
Lately some large farmers have joined the trade as village agents for supplies of farm
eucalyptus to the paper mills, or to brick kilns (their owners are mostly non-Muslims). This
transaction generally does not involve any other intermediary or processing, and there are no
trade barriers to their entry. Such exchanges are always in cash.
The fuelwood stalls have a locational monopoly. There are physical entry barriers, as new
shops would not be able to get the kind of open space required for a fuelwood retail trade.
Because of problems of space, some stalls are set up on encroached public lands.
Between sawmillers and wholesalers, and between retailers and sawmillers, there are often
interlocked contracts involving long payment delays. Thus sawmillers appear to be vertically
integrated (Hill and Ingersent, 1977) with both suppliers of raw material and retailers, but such
an integration is non-existent or weak when the produce is supplied from farmers to brick kilns
or paper mills in UP.
10.2. Case Study of a Fuelwood Market9
Rudrapur is a block-level market in the Kichha
tehsil
of Nainital district, UP. The town is easily
approachable from other main markets in the area, like Haldwani, Kichha, Rampur and
Kashipur. Settled after independence, Rudrapur is fast becoming a modern town, attracting
people from different parts of the country.
The distribution of wood traders in this town is as follows:
Type of trader No. of traders
Sawmill owners 3
Sellers of firewood 9
Plywood factories 5
9 Based on author’s own research carried out in 1990–91
50
The market receives its supply from an area encompassing 100 km2. About 10,000
quintals
of
eucalyptus from farm lands is purchased by firewood stalls (or
taals
) to meet the local needs of
the town. Sawmill owners receive their annual requirement of 7,000 quintals of sheesham, teak,
sal and mango wood from the Forest Corporation. The plywood factories buy from both the
Forest Corporation and farmers who sell poplar, mango and semal (silk cotton) to the factories
through traders.
The transportation of all of the firewood is done using cycles,
tongas
, bullock carts, rickshaws
and tractors, but very little sawn wood is transported by traditional means – trucks and tractors
are generally used instead. The plywood factories use trucks for transporting their raw materials
and finished products.
A traders’ committee functions here for the entire market, but there is no separate committee or
association for merchants dealing in wood. Sawmills, plywood factories and timber merchants
are widely spread out in different parts of the town and therefore the traders do not know each
other.
In spite of the inherent difficulties of this trade, two women are also engaged in this business.
These women have opened taals on the public footpath, which amounts to illegal
encroachment. Because they are women, they are not subjected to harassment by Corporation
staff and the police to the same extent as the male stallholders are. The husbands of both
these women have small
paan
(betel) shops in nearby kiosks and occasionally they help their
wives in the business. Their children also help.
Out of nine firewood stalls, only three are on the stallholders’ own land. Of the others, one is on
a rented plot and the remaining five are on footpaths or vacant public land. Because of an acute
shortage of space, these taals can only store 400–500 quintals of firewood at a time. Firewood
stored in larger quantities may lead to the stalls causing an obstruction. Some of the firewood
stallholders keep their stock with the farmers for weeks together, and transport it to their stalls
when there is available space. The stalls have a crowded appearance, with prospective buyers
and sellers of firewood vying to get fast service.
All the stallholders are above 25 and under 50 years old. Most are illiterate. Only one of them,
Lekhraj, has been educated up to primary level. Six out of the nine are not educating their
children. Most of the stall owners do not possess any agricultural land, but have side
businesses. For most of them, it is not an hereditary trade. In fact, most of them have
abandoned their traditional livelihoods and then adopted this particular vocation. Only one,
Karnail Singh, is following in his father’s footsteps. Most of the non-Muslim taal owners settled
in Rudrapur only after 1970. Karnail Singh is the only one who moved there with his father,
settling down in 1950 after migrating from the Punjab. His father started a career as a carpenter
and Karnail Singh is also engaged in the same trade, though on a limited scale.
Pattern of purchase
The firewood bought by the stalls consists of twigs and branches of less than six inches
diameter. The stallholders buy wood from contractors and farmers, and not from the Forest
Corporation, despite the fact that supply from the Forest Corporation is received on credit of
one month. This is because they are uneducated petty traders and lack large capital. They do
51
not have the confidence to deal with a government organization, which involves a lot of
paperwork. They fear harassment and difficulties in buying their requirement from the Forest
Corporation. The Corporation has in recent years reduced its total firewood sales, and now
concentrates more on timber. The farmers sell standing trees to traders and contractors who
buy wood at the rate of Rs 30–35 per quintal and sell it at Rs 45–50 per quintal to the firewood
stallholders after paying three rupees per quintal for cutting and two rupees per quintal for
cartage. Some stalls buy directly from gatherers who collect wood from forest lands and bring it
by cycle, rickshaw and tonga. They collect twigs and branches of sheesham, teak, sal, sakhoo,
mahua, pine, eucalyptus, poplar and whatever else is easily available from public lands.
Sometimes they spend the night in the shops and in the morning proceed to the forests to
gather wood. They take their payment once in three or four days. The firewood stalls buy their
requirement from them at rates varying from Rs 35 to 40 per quintal. The stallholders engage
labour for chopping the wood, for which they pay two rupees per quintal. On average, the hired
labourers are able to cut about 10 to 15 quintals of wood per head in a day. The stallholders
then add 30 per cent for drying and 20 per cent profit to the cost, which comes to 45 + 15 + 10
= 70 Rs per quintal, the sale price. The stalls do not buy standing trees from the farmers.
Some, like Lekhraj and Smt. Shakuntla Devi, go to the villages, but buy only the wood left with
the farmers by the contractors because it is unsuitable for pulp or poles.
When the firewood taal owners go to the farmers to buy, the consignment is weighed at the
farmers’ premises. But when the farmers bring their own wood to the taal owners, it is weighed
at the taal. Farmers are paid in cash by the taal owners. As the prices of all types of wood are
fixed according to weight, the traders buy and sell different varieties of wood, namely logs,
firewood and poles, on a per quintal basis only.
None of the firewood stall owners have any facilities for manufacturing furniture etc. from logs.
They do not possess their own transport, and are thus entirely dependent on contractors for
their transport requirements. They also do not keep any account of their sales and purchases.
After taking care of domestic expenses, all earnings are invested in the business.
The percentage of different types of wood arriving in the firewood stalls is as follows :
Eucalyptus 85%
Poplar 5%
Mango 2%
Sheesham 2%
Sakhoo 2%
Pipal 2%
Others 2%
Most of the traders are hesitant to borrow money as working capital from the banks. Because of
their limited capital and comparatively small investment, they cannot get a loan exceeding Rs
5,000 from the national banks. Some of them, however, borrowed Rs 5,000 from the banks to
start their businesses, with 15–18 per cent interest on the loan. Sometimes they also borrow
52
money with interest from the village moneylenders. These moneylenders give money only to
those who are known to them or who can produce sureties.
Pattern of Sale
Firewood received by the stalls is generally moist. As the buyers prefer dry wood, the stalls
store dry wood on one side and moist or freshly arrived wood on the other, so that the buyers
are not put to any inconvenience. Once the dry wood is exhausted it is supplemented from the
first pile, the oldest being sold first. Thus in this cycle, the buyers get wood that is dry and one
to two months old. Eucalyptus dries more than the other varieties of wood. Fully dried
eucalyptus weighs 30–40 per cent less than the freshly felled wood. In order to make sure they
can sell dry wood during the rainy season, the stallholders cover their stock with tarpaulin or
thick polythene.
During the months of May and June, the stallholders come to possess large stocks, because
farmers prefer to sell in those months, their fields being empty. As a result, twigs and branches
are received in the shops on a massive scale. The leanest stock is in the month of August,
because fewer trees are felled during the rains, and it is difficult to arrange for transport during
this season.
:RRGIXHO#IRU#WKH#XUEDQ#SRRU=#SLOHV#RI#ZRRG#ZDLWLQJ#WR#EH#WDNHQ#IRU#VDOH#LQ#XUEDQ#PDUNHWV
53
The percentage of eucalyptus consumed for different purposes in the town is as follows:
1. As domestic fuel 75%
2. For cremations 5%
3. For burning at road crossing by the municipality (during winter) 2%
4. In brick kilns 10%
5. In restaurants 5%
6. In kiosks and house construction 2%
7. Other purposes 1%
Thus the vast majority of eucalyptus is used as domestic fuel. The firewood sold in the shops is
bought by the daily-rated wage earners, who do not possess modern gadgets such as gas
stoves to cook their food. About 50% of the town’s 40,000-strong population use wood for
cooking. Besides, it is used by shopkeepers selling cooked food and sweets, and by the
crematorium for cremations. Poles of eucalyptus are used by the local populace in house
construction. The municipal corporation also burns a large quantity of wood at street corners to
stave off cold.
Prices
Since the consumption of eucalyptus in this town is much less than that for pulpwood in the
nearby paper mill, it is the latter which sets the price, and the stallholders’ buying rates are
adjusted as per the scheduled rates of the paper mill. Compared to the firewood taal holders,
the rural traders have a better understanding of price trends. They keep themselves abreast of
the prices at Haldwani, Lalkuan, Rampur, Nainital, Kichha, Bareilly etc., as they sell their wood
in these markets also.
The sale and purchase prices prevailing in this market during the last five years are shown in
the following table:
7DEOH#53=#&KDQJHV#RYHU#\HDUV#LQ#WKH#SXUFKDVH#DQG#UHWDLO#VDOH#SULFHV#RI#IXHOZRRG
Year Sale price of
dry wood* Purchase price of
wet wood * Retail price index for
town dwellers
1978 Rs 35 Rs 20 188
1980 Rs 40 Rs 25 212
1982 Rs 45 Rs 30 255
1985 Rs 50 Rs 35 315
1988 Rs 60 Rs 40 405
1990 Rs 70 Rs 45 495
Increase during
1978–90 100% 125% 163%
* Rate per quintal
54
This shows that the rise in the purchase price of wood has been slightly more than that in the
sale price, so trade margins have declined. Possible reasons for this include gluts of
eucalyptus; general stagnation or decline in fuelwood prices all over western UP; a faster rise in
per capita income of the town population and concomitant shift to modern fuels; and greater
coverage of gas and kerosene in the population of Rudrapur (as it is classified as a hill town,
and gets several facilities, such as subsidies for fuel substitution, not available to other towns).
These figures are, however, taken from the stallholders, and suffer from the usual problems of
recall.
The price of firewood does not vary from shop to shop in Rudrapur. The current retail price is
about Rs 70 per quintal. When purchases are made in large quantities, a discount of five
rupees per quintal is given provided a minimum purchase of at least 100 quintals is made. If
50–100 quintals is purchased, there is a discount of two rupees per quintal.
Until about five years back, farmers did not produce any wood on their own farms. Eucalyptus,
sal and teak wood, which were being used for poles and beams, came from the forest to the
market. Villagers, too, had to come to the market if they needed beams for house construction,
or poles for ceremonies. However, due to the plantation of eucalyptus by farmers on a massive
scale, these are now freely available in the village itself, which has led to a shrinking of demand
in the market for poles. Their prices have also fallen: formerly, poles used to sell for Rs 200–
300 a piece, but now the price has fallen to Rs 40–45 a piece.
Dealing with government
For conducting fuelwood business, licenses are required from the following organizations:
1. The Market Committee;
2. The Forest Dept; and
3. The Municipal Corporation for storage on public premises.
It is compulsory for all retail and wholesale dealers to obtain licenses from nos 1 and 3,
however, sawmills and plywood factories also require a license from the Forest Department, as
they buy their raw materials from the Forest Corporation.
According to the traders, the greatest threat to their business is the constant harassment and
prosecution threats from government departments. This often needs to be pre-empted by
paying bribes. In addition, modern gadgets like gas stoves also pose a potential threat to their
business. The risk of fire during the summer is another problem, as thin twigs and branches
ignite easily.
55
11. CHARCOAL MARKETS
While woodfuel markets in western UP are comparatively less flawed, markets in many other
regions are quite exploitative. We discuss10 below the economic condition of charcoal makers in
tribal Maharashtra, where there are around 4,000–5,000 families engaged in charcoal making,
mostly as labourers. Around 80 per cent of these families belong to poor Katkari tribes
originating from the districts of Raigad and Thane. These people are very poor, illiterate and
also subjected to severe exploitation, being quite unorganized. They live in a condition of virtual
bonded labour. The government appears to be quite unaware of this situation, or at least is
unwilling to acknowledge that this kind of exploitation exists.
Up to 1950, most charcoal was used as domestic fuel in urban areas such as Bombay. While
this demand declined due to the availability of alternative fuels, there was an increasing
demand for charcoal from industries producing rayon, rubber tyres, textiles and carbides. At
present about 75 per cent of charcoal is being used by industries, and the rest is used as
domestic fuel.
Charcoal labourers are controlled by traders, who sell the produce to stockists in Bombay.
About half a dozen wholesale stockists operate from Shivadi market in Bombay. This small
group, who come from Uttar Pradesh, control the entire manufacturing and trading of charcoal.
Generally, in the months of August and September these stockists advance to traders between
50 and 100 per cent of the final value of the coal to be sold to them. The price of the coal is
determined in advance at this time, when it is normally 25 per cent less than the prevailing price
in the winter months. Charcoal manufacturing starts from November onwards, and traders
supply the charcoal to stockists. These stockists hold the entire stock and deal with industries
on their own. Normally a trader keeps business relations with more than one stockist at a time.
However, the stockists control the price and movement of coal and also have an important lever
in the form of the money they advance to the traders, the mechanism through which the whole
system works. Charcoal is normally sold at prices ranging from Rs 95 to Rs 125 per quintal. It is
estimated that the original tribal labourers get around just 10 per cent of the final value in the
whole production activity.
The traders are engaged in the illicit cutting of trees from public lands, which is ignored by the
local-level government functionaries in the Revenue and Forest Departments. The seasonal
migrant families whose major occupation is charcoal making migrate to remote forests where
the charcoal is made. The jobs performed by these families are cutting of trees; cutting the
woodlots down to the appropriate size; collecting firewood and carrying it over to the kiln site;
arranging the kiln; plastering, setting fire to and then cooling the kiln when the charcoal is
ready; and ultimately packing it in gunny bags. Normally, charcoal making starts around the end
of November and continues until May. All the families reported that they undertook seasonal
migration every year for this activity. In the normal course of events, the traders engage the
labourers in their village by making advances during the monsoon period, when these tribals
are in need of consumption loans. This contract continues year after year, unless disputes arise
at the time of final settlement in May which compels them to go to other contractors.
10 Based on Saathe (1988); prices relate to 1986–87
56
All the labouring families perceived that they were being cheated and exploited by the traders.
Sixty-one per cent of families felt that they were deceived in the weighing of charcoal in gunny
bags. Sixty per cent of the respondents believed that they, being ignorant and unorganized,
were deceived in the final settlement of payments. About 87 per cent of the respondents stated
that employment in charcoal making was not rewarding or worthwhile, nor in their best interest.
However, they had no other options for meeting the needs of survival and were forced to accept
seasonal migration and the employment in which they were thoroughly cheated.
11.1. Charcoal Production from Prosopis in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu
A study by IIM Ahmedabad of charcoal makers in Gujarat (IIM, 1993) showed that the simple
operation of converting prosopis into charcoal, which can give employment to thousands of
people, requires several permissions. Harvesting, conversion and transportation are all
subjected to departmental controls involving cumbersome and time-consuming procedures. For
instance, the government of Gujarat has banned harvesting of prosopis from forest areas, so
the production of charcoal is carried out in individual or private lands. The procedure
established for harvesting and converting prosopis into charcoal is controlled by the Revenue
and Forest Departments. The steps followed are shown below:
First Step: Application submitted by individual farmer/producer/institution to the
Revenue Department seeking permission for harvesting.
Second Step: Revenue authorities visit the site and give permission for harvesting.
Third Step: Application submitted to the Forest Department for permission to
convert prosopis into charcoal.
Fourth Step: Forest officials visit the site to estimate the likely quantity of charcoal
that would be produced and give permission for conversion.
Fifth Step: Farmers/producers then apply to the Forest Department for
permission to load and transport charcoal.
Sixth Step: In the presence of forest officials, charcoal is loaded in trucks. The
number of the truck carrying the charcoal, bags loaded, destination,
route, time of departure and estimated time of arrival are all indicated
in the pass issued for transport by the forest officials.
Seventh Step: Charcoal is carried to the specified market with the transit pass.
57
These constraints reduce production and increase the cost of supply of charcoal. Many
households and some of the industrial consumers have stopped using charcoal as fuel because
of rising prices. One kilogram of charcoal costs more than one kilogram of grain. Rising price is
a function of both short supply and increased demand. However, charcoal continues to be used
by laundry units, charcoal briquette manufacturers, lead extractors, metal processing units,
coriander seed processors, incense manufacturers, food vendors and hostels in Ahmedabad
city. Increased supply would certainly change the situation and benefit all types of charcoal
users.
In Tamil Nadu too, another area of abundance of prosopis, charcoal producers faced several
problems. In January 1986, the Tamil Nadu government authorized forest officers to issue a
certificate of origin for the transport of charcoal to other states after verifying its origin.
However, charcoal producers had difficulty in implementing these orders and in satisfying the
issuing authorities about the origin. Charcoal is prepared at the felling sites by small producers
who are constantly on the move. They sell it at their sites or cart it to bigger producers who buy
it, pool it and grade it for transport to other states. The same thing holds good for wood which
bigger producers buy from different sources and convert into charcoal. The small producers are
not able to give any information about survey numbers, much less certificates from the village
officers. They also cannot afford the ‘incidental expenses’ incurred in getting a permit.
Charcoal making was perceived to have contributed positively to the general economy of the
district. A sizeable number of agricultural labourers who used to migrate temporarily to
Thanjavur district to work on paddy fields in order to supplement the meagre incomes they
could earn in their own area, have found enough employment locally to stop migrating.
Harvesting of prosopis generally begins some time in June–July and goes on up to August, the
time the people used to migrate. Now, September, October and November also provide
employment, as plantation and sowing operations are carried out before the onset of the rains.
Increased employment has been a welcome gain in the region.
Charcoal not only offers higher economic returns, but also many advantages in terms of
convenience. It was observed that prosopis as a woodfuel (a) was bulky to carry; (b) had poor
shelf-life; (c) involved higher transport costs; (d) involved higher administrative workload, as
each truck needed official permission; (e) could not be stored, unlike charcoal, in anticipation of
higher prices; (f) was not preferred by customers if it contained thinner pieces; and (g) was
problematic because of its thorns (IIM, 1993). Customers also did not prefer fuelwood as it (a)
tended to be wasteful to some extent; (b) blackened utensils; and (c) gave off smoke.
On the other hand, the above case studies demonstrate that (a) charcoal production based on
prosopis juliflora
, a species that generally concentrates in low-rainfall and high-risk ecological
regions (where agriculture is not a major supporter of the household economy), can be
economically viable; (b) charcoal making has the potential to generate gainful employment to
poor families in regions where it was most needed; (c) the supply pattern of charcoal varied
greatly but could be stabilized and improved with organizational innovations; (d) charcoal
making is most suited to areas having sizeable wastelands; (e) charcoal making is based on
local resources which have a value addition potential; (f) there is a need to promote the
application of science and technology in prosopis cultivation in problematic soils and in charcoal
making practices; (g) charcoal making can support married women, as the help of all family
members is instrumental; (h) charcoal making need not displace existing workers; (i) the
58
economics of prosopis-based charcoal production are more favourable than that of marketing
prosopis as fuelwood; (j) charcoal making does not have any competition from the established
industries, as it is a decentralized rural activity; (k) it is sustainable, as
prosopis juliflora
is
renewable; and (l) the marketing of charcoal should not be difficult because industrial demand
is expanding (IIM,1993: 34).
Comprehensive changes are needed in government policy on charcoal. Currently, charcoal
policy lacks a broader perspective. Prosopis provides a good opportunity to make wealth out of
wastelands, promote employment opportunities, improve land use pattern, and make available
raw materials needed by industries.
59
12. FUELWOOD PRODUCTION POLICY IN PERSPECTIVE
Up until the beginning of the 1970s, forest policy in India did not give adequate importance to
fuelwood supplies. How, then, does one explain the `discovery' of a woodfuel crisis by policy
makers in the mid-1970s? Two explanations have generally been advanced (Agarwal, 1986: 3).
One is that the oil crisis of the early ‘70s led the developing countries to a general re-
assessment of their energy options in favour of biofuels. The other is that deforestation, land
degradation and other ecological consequences were linked in the minds of policy makers with
insatiable demand for fuel-gathering by rural people. This put increased pressure on reserve
forests, and in order to reduce this pressure, policy makers decided that fuelwood production
had to be increased.
In the 1980s, two assumptions dominated official thinking on fuelwood. Firstly, that there was a
huge gap between supply and demand for fuelwood, so much so that India may have sufficient
food for its population, but not enough fuel to cook it. And secondly, that planting of trees
through social forestry programmes on non-forest lands was the most appropriate response to
the fuelwood shortage.
Over the past decade, understanding of the ways in which rural people use trees and forests
has improved considerably. In addition, several fuel surveys and evaluation reports are
available now. It may therefore be worthwhile to analyse the new evidence in order to reassess
these earlier assumptions.
Studies done by the NCAER (1985), Leach (1987) and Natarajan (1990) show that domestic
fuel shortages are much smaller than were initially understood. Part of the miscalculation was
because official output from forests was assumed to be the major source of supply, and other
sources of fuel like agricultural wastes and dung were forgotten. Also, much of the wood used
as fuel actually comes from twigs and branches, and that too from non-forest lands. Third,
sources of fuelwood change: in the past 10 years, more fuelwood has come from Prosopis
juliflora than from social forestry plantations. In Tamil Nadu alone, the total yield of prosopis for
fuelwood alone accounted for 75 per cent of the total fuelwood consumption.
This should not be interpreted as an argument that fuel shortages do not exist in India; they still
do in many parts for the poor, and, in some ecologically fragile areas like the hills, for many
rural households. But it is necessary to understand the nature of the problem more accurately if
we are to define appropriate interventions. Moreover, urban and rural fuelwood problems are
completely distinct, and require different solutions (Shepherd, 1990). For the poor, the shortage
of fuel does not generally feature high among their priorities, for if they are short of fuel, they
are most likely to be even shorter of income, cash and food supplies. The poor would certainly
like better opportunities for gathering of twigs and branches, not because they burn it all, but
because they can sell them and bring the much needed cash to the family. In prosopis-
abundant districts, sale of prosopis twigs has emerged as a cottage industry for the poor,
especially for women and children.
The problem is more severe in agriculturally depressed areas which do not have the benefit of
either dense forest or natural growth of shrubs like prosopis. Why has social forestry done little
to reduce fuelwood shortages for rural consumers in these areas?
60
Although social forestry projects were designed to produce fuelwood, in practice, market-
oriented trees have been planted which have done nothing to improve consumption of fuelwood
by the rural poor. The main product of community and farm forestry has been eucalyptus poles,
the benefits of which could never reach the rural poor. On top of this, half of the social forestry
has been on private lands. As fuelwood has not been seen as income-generating, farmers have
preferred more commercial trees, and continued to collect twigs and branches from public lands
as before. Farmers have shown very little interest in using their scarce land and capital
resources to generate a low-value product they could collect. It is unfair to load social concerns
on farmers if they see no economic returns. Actually, in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat
and UP, where eucalyptus glut has forced the farmers to sell their trees at fuelwood prices, they
have stopped growing trees, as the fuelwood prices hardly cover production costs.
What policy prescriptions follow from the above analysis? First, a distinction must be made
between fuelwood from logs and fuelwood from twigs and branches. The former, even if
produced on public lands, is out of the reach of the rural poor since it gets marketed and at best
helps the urban poor. The rural poor have access only to twigs and branches, which require the
labour-intensive process of collection and hence are not picked up by contractors along with the
log.
Second, such material is best made available to the poor through shrubs and bushes, and not
from large trees whose value lies in their stem. Third, as fuelwood shortages are not as
pervasive as was earlier thought, the objective of social forestry should be not only to produce
twigs and branches, but also to generate self-employment for the poor through the gathering of
consumption goods like minor forest products, wild fruits and mulch. Fourth, the concept of
social forestry must be extended to reserve forest lands, where usufruct trees would be planted
along with short-gestation grasses, shrubs and bushes. Fifth, wastelands should be utilized for
fuelwood plantations of suitable species, such as prosopis, so as to increase the availability of
fuelwood in the shortest possible time and with little investment. Finally, farm forestry should be
geared to meet the farmers', rather than national, priorities.
61
13. SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DIFFERENT CATEGORIES
OF LANDS
Rapid expansion of forestry programmes has taken place in India in the last two decades
without the growth of systematic knowledge about how and why they affect rural people.
Because of a lack of clarity about the likely outcomes of the policy, neither of the two initiatives
taken by the government in the last two decades – industrial plantations on forest lands and
social forestry on village lands – were able to stop the degradation of India’s natural forests, or
to provide more fuelwood to the rural people. The success of farm forestry has certainly brought
prices down, but still the poor satisfy their needs through gathering and do not budget for fuel.
The present document, written as a supplementary reader for trainees at the National Academy
of Administration, Mussoorie, seeks to review the existing policy and implementation issues,
and makes practical recommendations for improving the availability of woodfuel to the poor.
These are summarized in this section for different categories of lands.
Forest lands
Between Revenue and Forest lands, the latter should get a higher priority for funds.
Compared with departmental forestry on Revenue lands, they have obvious advantages of
scale and protection. The ambiguities of ownership which have plagued social forestry
would not apply. Forest soils are generally better than the soils on Revenue lands. Costs
would be lower. Also, the morale of the Forest Department would be higher, since the trees
would be planted in territory they are familiar with.
The two main components of afforestation – farm forestry and afforestation of degraded
forest lands – should have different objectives and approaches. Farm forestry and
agroforestry should aim at maximizing sustained economic returns from land, whereas
public forestry should aim at maximizing welfare through production of such commodities as
fuelwood, fodder and NTFPs, which are needed by the people. The choice of species,
though subject to agroclimatic and technical considerations, would also be different for the
two programmes. Short-duration exotics, which give high market value, would be suitable
for farm forestry, whereas species which have their value in the crown and not in the stem
would be suitable for public forestry.
As timber is a product of the dead tree, whereas people collect branches for fuel from living
trees, allowing the stem to perform its various environmental functions, and as gathering is
more labour-intensive than mechanized clear-felling, fuelwood-based forestry would be
more sustainable than timber-based forestry in poor regions.
This would be reversing the traditional perception of what is the main product and what is
the by-product, so choice of species and management should be radically changed to suit
the new policy. From forest lands, leaves, twigs and dead wood should become the main
intended products, and timber would be a by-product from large multipurpose trees. For
quick benefits to the poor, long-gestation trees should be supplemented with an understorey
of bushes and shrubs, which could satisfy their immediate needs. Multiple objectives to
maximize outputs from many products will require innovative and experimental silviculture,
62
which must focus more on the management of shrub and herb layers, and on forest floor
management to enrich the soil and encourage natural regeneration.
In Joint Forest Management (JFM) areas, settlement and usufruct rights should be reviewed
in order to put them in harmony with the care-and-share philosophy which is the basis of
JFM.
Revenue lands
The FD’s present practice of taking over common lands should be stopped, or drastically
reduced to experimental projects. Funds for afforestation should be transferred to the village
community. The role of the Forest Department would be mainly extension and technical
support.
Generally, only a small area of Revenue land is available in each village. If afforestation
were left to the panchayat, it would take up only a small portion of this, and plenty of land
would be left for use by the poor for grazing.
Where panchayats represent several villages, single-village organizations should be
created. Finally, distribution of produce is better done on the basis of one household: one
share.
Model afforestation schemes should be prepared for implementation by the panchayats.
These should be widely circulated, and panchayats should be encouraged to apply for
funds.
Often degraded lands are available in larger chunks, but these are not taken up as the cost
of reclamation would be high. However, in the long run, it is better to afforest these, as they
have better demonstration effect, satisfy local demand and offer better management
possibilities.
Extremely degraded lands are best suited for undertaking fuelwood plantations using
species like prosopis. Research should be undertaken to develop a thornless variety so as
to facilitate gathering.
Farm forestry
Private forestry requires security of land and tree tenure, and secure access to markets.
The restrictive laws on harvesting, movement and sale of forest products must be
abolished.
The government should stop subsidies on its own supply of wood to industries, thereby
forcing industry to buy from the farmers at a realistic price. The new Forest Policy endorses
this suggestion, but in many states, subsidies still continue. Since the demand for marketed
wood in India is limited, by duplicating the same species on Forest lands and on farm lands,
such as eucalyptus, we are ultimately cutting into the farmers’ profits, and thus undermining
63
the farm forestry programme itself. Also, from lops and tops of farm trees, wood for fuel
would be produced.
Farmers should have a range of other short-rotation, high-value species beside eucalyptus
and acacia on their land, which meet their various needs and spread the risk to their income
from the collapse of any one market. The economics of each model should be worked out
for several years ahead. Diversification of species would also be better for the environment.
New uses of wood should be promoted, such as power generation via gasification. This
would improve the profitability of wood production on degraded farm lands.
Administrative and legal controls over charcoal making from prosopis should be removed,
as the activity does not lead to deforestation and is labour intensive.
Finally, the main barriers to afforestation in India are institutional: those concerning
empowerment of local communities, proper land and product tenure to them, and involvement
in decision making (Saxena,1995). These issues deserve urgent attention.
64
14. GLOSSARY
babul Acacia nilotica
; a small evergreen tree, can stand periodical
flooding, hence ideal for tank foreshore afforestation
bamboo
Bambusa arundinacea
and
Dendrocalamus strictus
are the two
most common species; wanted by both the paper industry and
the poor
cashew
Anacardium occidentale
casuarina
Casuarina equisetifolia
; widely grown in coastal areas for poles
and fuelwood.
chulha
Small open stoves which use wood, dung cakes or charcoal for
cooking
coppice Re-sprouting of trees after felling
forest dwellers People living inside or in the close vicinity of forests
Forest land Lands under the control of the Forest Department
mahua Madhuca indica
; occurs most commonly near tribal habitations
in central India; flowers and seeds are rich in oil, and are eaten
mulberry
Morus alba
; leaves are used as food for silk-worms, fruit is
eaten, and its wood is used for sports goods
panchayat
Village council; the lowest form of local government; consists of
elected members headed by a chairman
pasture Open-access lands meant for grazing; often highly degraded
poles Wood of 20–25 cm diameter, which is generally used for
scaffolding and as posts
poplar An agroforestry tree; has grown well in Haryana, Punjab and
western UP; timber used for matchwood, veneer and sports
goods
Revenue lands Lands under the control of the Revenue Department; these are
non-Forest Department and non-private lands, often highly
degraded
rotation Time interval between regeneration of a tree and its felling
sal Shorea robusta
; a common but slow growing large tree in Indian
forests; yields both timber and important minor forest products
like seeds and leaves
sapota Parkia roxburgii
; yields fuel, fruit and medicines
sheesham Dalbergia sissoo
; a favourite road-side tree in northern India;
wood used for wheels, boats and furniture
65
social forestry Programme of growing trees to satisfy rural needs of fuelwood,
small timber and fodder
subabul Leucaena leucoephala
; a fast growing nitrogen fixing tree;
yields both fodder leaves and fuelwood; despite efforts it
plantation has not been successful outside Maharashtra
tamarind
Tamarindus indica
; an evergreen, multi-purpose tree; yields
edible sour fruits, fodder and timber
teak
Tectona grandis
; highly valued for quality timber used in
furniture, house building and cabinets
tendu Diospyros melanoxylon
; used as wrappers of tobacco to
produce
bidi
, Indian cigarettes
tribals People who until recently lived by hunting and gathering of
forest products, or practised shifting cultivation
66
15. ABBREVIATIONS
ABE Advisory Board on Energy
AFC Agriculture Finance Corporation
AP Andhra Pradesh
CSE Centre for Science and Environment
DRDA District Rural Development Agency
ESCI Energy Survey Committee of India
FD Forest Department
FPC Fuel Policy Committee
FSI Forest Survey of India
GNP Gross National Product
GOI Government of India
ha hectare(s)
IREP Integrated Rural Energy Planning
IC improved cookstove
IIM Indian Institute of Management
IIPO Indian Institute of Public Opinion
JFM Joint Forest Management
LPG liquid petroleum gas
m ha million hectares
MP Madhya Pradesh
Mt million tonnes
Mtce million tonnes of coal equivalent
NCA National Commission on Agriculture, 1976
NCAER National Council for Applied Economic Research
NGO non-governmental organization
NTFP non-timber forest produce
NWDB National Wasteland Development Board
ORG Operation Research Group
REDB Rural Energy Data Base
RF reserve forest
67
Rs rupees
SIDA Swedish International Development Agency
SPWD Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development
SWDF Sadguru Water and Development Foundation
TERI Tata Energy Research Institute
TN Tamil Nadu
UP Uttar Pradesh
WGEP Working Group on Energy Policy
68
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... Saxena (1993) described it as 'spontaneous'). Because of its tolerance to drought, submergence, and salinity, and its high coppicing ability (Elfadl and Luukkanen, 2003;Mahmood et al., 2001;Shiferaw et al., 2004), Prosopis has been widely used as a fuel wood or charcoal resource in India's semi-arid zone (Perera et al., 2005;Saxena, 1997) and has been recognised as an important income source for poor inhabitants 0264-8377/$ -see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ...
... Some scholars have examined the economic value of Prosopis (e.g. Haji and Mohammed, 2013;Mwangi and Swallow, 2008;Saxena, 1997), but no study has examined this species in relation to energy transition. ...
Article
Against the backdrop of expanding commercial crop markets and private well expansion, market-oriented agriculture has developed in villages with access to abundant water resources in Tamil Nadu, India. On the other hands, the villages that have failed to secure sufficient irrigation water have experienced sharp decline in cropping. Such land has been rapidly invaded by Prosopis juliflora, a tree species that has wide adaptability of the different environments and high coppicing ability. This species has traditionally been harvested as a fuel for domestic use and small-scale businesses, and recognised as "a tree for the poor". However, since the establishment of the electricity act in 2003, which completely deregulated participation of private companies in the electricity generation industry, the new usage of Prosopis has been created: several small-scale electricity generating plants began to utilise this tree as an energy source. As a result, the demand for Prosopis tree rapidly increased and the real price of raw wood has more than doubled between 2003 and 2009. A census survey of household income revealed that income generated from Prosopis expansion compensated for the decrease of cropping, and contributed to an increase in the net household income, especially for the landless labourers and middle class land holders. This fact indicates that it is possible to reduce poverty in a semi-arid rural area without securing additional irrigation water, in case proper institutions and technologies are in place.
... Eucalyptus plantations (lignocellulosic biomass) can be found in over 90 countries across five continents, making it the world's fastest-growing hardwood forestry sector, with a total plantation area of between 16 and 19 million hectares (40-47 million acres) [7]. With over 70 % of three million hectares agro/farm forestry plantations, India stands only next to Brazil among the countries that raise large quantity of Eucalyptus biomass [8]. Unlike direct combustion, conversion of this lignocellulosic feedstock to high energy dense products may be an environmentally and economically sustainable use of this resource. ...
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The prospects of chars derived from the co-pyrolysis of waste polystyrene (WPS) and eucalyptus biomass at variable temperatures (300 to 550 °C), residence times (90 to 150 minutes) and proportions of WPS (w/w) (33 % and 25 %) for their potential use as a solid fuel were assessed. The production of char suggested an improved fuel quality compared to the raw feedstock because of reduced volatile and oxygen contents, along with an increase in the carbon and fixed carbon contents. While the properties of the char such as energy density (1.12 - 1.30), high heat value (28.03 - 32.5 MJ/Kg) had their maximum values observed with 33 % WPS content at 300 ºC, fixed carbon (4.5 – 34.19 %), fuel ratio (0.05 - 0.64) were maximum with 25 % WPS content at 550 ºC. Moreover, the energy yield of the char was higher than the mass yield. The chars produced at 300, 350 °C were observed to have O/C and H/C ratios similar to that of sub-bituminous and bituminous coal. Principal component analysis presented the variable effects of WPS on the properties of the char through physical inhibition and synergistic interactions below and above the complete volatilisation temperature of WPS.
... The task force of planning commission on Greening India for Livelihood Security and Sustainable Development (2001) also recommended that agroforestry may be promoted for sustainable agriculture. Forest conservation efforts involving reduction of deforestation and degradation may have to increasingly rely on alternatives provided by TOF (Saxena, 1997;Namwata, et al, 2012) in catering to economic demand in forest edges. Various forms of agroforestry exists in India and they occupy considerable area in the whole country. ...
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Agroforestry is an integrated self-sustainable land use management system that is not only capable of producing food from marginal agricultural land but also capable of maintaining and improving the quality of environment. Accurate assessment of trees on farmlands i.e. agroforestry would help in determining their contribution in meeting timber demand and also in carbon sequestration vis-a-vis climate change mitigation. In the present, high resolution multispectral satellite imagery (LISS-IV) has been used for mapping and estimating agroforestry area in Koraput district of Odisha. Both supervised and Object based Image Analysis (OBIA) classifications methods have been applied. In case of supervised maximum likelihood method, those pixels are fully captured where trees exist, whereas in OBIA captures trees according to their crown shapes. This proved OBIA method to be better in identification of trees on farmlands (scattered trees, boundary, and block plantations) than supervised method. This can lead to accurate estimation of area under trees in scattered form, in linear form and also in patch form. Improved results were obtained in case of OBIA classification with more than 90% accuracy. This research implies that remote sensing provide promising tools for evaluating and mapping of agroforestry at district level. Hence, the proposed approach of using high resolution remote sensing data in conjunction with OBIA method would be promising for mapping agroforestry area.
... In addition, being a coppicer, it grows more profusely if cut. This enterprise is running in several states of India since last several decades, but regulatory policies are not yet in place (Saxena 1997). During the survey, traders expressed their concerns that the charcoal enterprise is a non-organized sector, therefore, different players in the charcoal making chain are not fully committed to their jobs. ...
Article
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Prosopis juliflora (Swartz) DC., an invasive alien plant species, is known as a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem services world over. It has heavily invaded community grazing lands (CGLs) in the Indian Thar Desert. The present study reports effects of four canopy sizes, (i.e. small, medium, large and no-canopy/open plot), of P. julflora shrub on native vegetation and soil fertility (0–20 cm depth) in the CGLs distributed in Jodhpur, Pali, and Sirohi districts in the Desert. In addition, economic profitability of P. juliflora based three enterprises, (i.e. charcoal making, pod-flour making, and sheep rearing in the grasslands if developed in the CGLs), was evaluated to find out invasion control measures of the shrub through utilization. Soil organic carbon (SOC), total N, available P and K, and mineral N (NO3⁻–N, NH4⁺–N) and soil-moisture contents were higher under the shrub canopy than in open plot; and they were the highest under the large and lowest under the small canopy sizes. But, light intensity (Lux) declined under the canopy. The decline, however, was the highest under the large and lowest under the small canopy sizes. Composition of native plant species changed and their richness and diversity declined under the canopy, but was higher under the larger canopy size. Economic analyses revealed that investment was the highest (5476USha1)inthecharcoalandlowest(486US ha⁻¹) in the charcoal and lowest (486US ha⁻¹) in pod-flour enterprise, but gross profit and net present value (NPV) were the highest (10740USha1and5264US ha⁻¹ and 5264US ha⁻¹, respectively) in the charcoal and lowest (895USha1and409US ha⁻¹ and 409US ha⁻¹, respectively) in pod-flour enterprise. Other economic parameters, like the annuity and internal rate of return (IRR), were also the highest in the charcoal and lowest in pod-flour enterprise suggesting that the charcoal enterprise is economically the most profitable enterprise; and it may control the invasion of the P. juliflora in the Desert.
... In India, trees outside forests are key biomass resources as they cater to majority of timber requirement of up to about 80 %, apart from the wide ranging goods and service they offer (Arnold 1996;Saxena 1997;Auclair et al. 2000). Recent surge of interest in Agro-forestry as exemplified by approval of World's first Agro-forestry policy of India as well as conducting World Agroforestry Congress of 2014 adds to the scope of increment in TOF as a mitigation and adaptation measures in India. ...
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Estimation of Trees Outside Forests (TOF), a valuable vegetation component in the overall constitution of land use/land cover as well as sustainable economy, poses a challenge in its estimation, due to its discrete nature of its spread and highly dynamic occurrence. The present study is a part of ‘Vegetation Carbon pools’, a sub project of National carbon Project, which aims to employ satellite remote sensing in tandem with in situ methods. Study is proposed to be taken up using geospatial framework. The spatial framework relies on the premise that trees outside forests are likely to occupy specific spatial contexts such as man-made infrastructure as part of various plantation programmes and it is possible to map such spatial context e.g., roads, railways, canal and ponds(referred as ‘TOF niche’). A geospatial frame using a grid of 5 × 5 km resolution has been prepared involving information derived from a national zonation using multiple themes, open series digital topographic sheets and land use land cover database at 1:50,000 scale, available under Natural Resources Census of ISRO-National Natural Resources Management System. Gridded frame aims to stratify entire India in terms of density of infrastructure that may harbour TOF followed by selection of representative windows of high resolution panchromatic and multispectral Indian Remote Sensing images. A case study demonstrating the approach was carried out for the Telangana region. TOF information was derived using satellite images, available from open source Earth visualization, in specific sampled grids across sub-regions of Telangana to establish factors explaining each niche in terms of TOF content, which was used to derive estimates across the region intended. In all, 4005 grids were considered for assessment which contained 73,84,000 trees, which amounted to an average of 73.7 tree per sq km.
... The economics of growing trees for woodfuel production are often clouded because it must compete with the high proportion of woodfuel collected and marketed from public lands without payment. In India woodfuel prices have been artificially low because prices of woodfuel from government land have often been fixed or subsidised (Ahmed 1997; Saxena 1997; Long and Nair 1999). The use of multi-purpose trees in agroforestry systems acknowledges that planting solely for woodfuel is uneconomic. ...
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Background Elsewhere in other developing countries, and 85% of the Ethiopian population is living in rural part of the country and more than 90% of domestic energy source is dependent of traditional biofuel. Increase in population is causing more demand for human use and more pressure on natural resources. This adversely affect the increase of multi-purpose and indigenous tree plantation and ago-forestry practice and hence has a vicious circle with food security. However, following the start of community based watershed management practice, households are encouraged to plant trees on their private land, which contributed to the increase of forest coverage. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess household level tree planting, domestic energy consumption, and explore implication for environmental conservation. ResultsFuelwood and dung was major source of domestic energy in the area, consumed on an average 2280 and 1533 kg/year respectively and the total biofuel consumption was 268.06 t/year. The decline in natural forest and increase in demand for wood motivated people to have privately planted trees. Though it was variable among various socio-economic characteristics of farmers, tree planting was encouraged, based on ground reality. Therefore, promoting private based tree plantation should be considered as economic relief and filling the demand gap of fuelwood. Likewise, the opportunity cost of dung available for soil conditioner. The use of fuel saving stove and other alternative source of energy should be encouraged. Conclusion Local context policy option used for favoring for the allocation of bare land and mountainous topography for community and private tree planting for landless and small holder farmers has to be encouraged.