| Abstract: | During the early eighties farmers in north-west India planted Eucalyptus on a massive scale for sale as poles and pulpwood. However, after 1986 farmers in this region have almost stopped growing Eucalyptus, as their experience with its marketing was not a happy one. The pole market got saturated, paper mills did not pay a remunerative price, and fuelwood prices were low and uneconomical. More important, because of legal restrictions on the transport and sale of wood, and other institutional factors, the gap in the farmgate price and the consumer price remained very wide. Wood markets have, on the whole, exploited the farmers, rather than helped them. Due to this, the short period of flirtation with tree crops seems to be over for at least resident farmers in those very areas in north-west India where they had so enthusiastically planted Eucalyptus in the early 1980s.Abbreviations BDO
Block Development Officer
- Headloaders
poor people who collect firewood on their heads from forest lands for consumption and sale
- m ha
million hectares
- Rs
Indian Rupee 16 Rs = 1 US Dollar in 1989
- panchayat
elected village organisation
- pradhan
village chief
On study leave from the Government of India to the Oxford Forestry Institute, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, U.K. Present address: 17 Ponnappa Road, Allahabad 211001, India |
