This presentation by Kanchi Kohlu and Manju Menon provides information on upland agroforest mosaic and emerging issues of smallholder farms and community forestry in India's upland areas. It was given at the Forests Asia Summit in Jakarta in May 2014.

1. Property, Sustainable Food
Production and Forest
Management in Sloping lands
Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon
India
Forest Asia Summit, Jakarta, 5th May 2014

2. Separation of farms and forests –
important for the colonial project
Post 1947 these continued and our
agricultural and forestry policies give
impression that they provide for different
things (schemes and programs of forest and
agriculture departments: not linked).
Different historical experience of a century
of forest regulation in different parts of
India

3. Forests were separated from food
producing areas, but forests provide food,
farms provide cash too.
What got affected by these hard boundaries
was not just mobility, but freedom to
choose what is food and how it should be
procured
Revenue collections improved; forests freed
up for business (timber)

4. Upland Agroforest Mosaics
Uttara Kannada (Karnataka): Western ghats,
dominated by farming Brahmins, most studied
areas but missed government intervention due
to elevation limit (600 m as per planning
commission).
North Sikkim (Sikkim): border areas, Eastern
himalayas, ethnic minorities, understudied,
extensive policy interventions to rid
backwardness

5. Farm- Forest continuum in
Uttara Kannada

6. Paddy /Millets
Cultivation
Reserved Forest
Betta land
Sacred grove
Spice Garden

7. Multi layered Horticulture system
Areca nut
Pepper
Vanilla
Cocoa
Banana
Coconut
Ginger
Turmeric
Cardamom etc,
24 crops,
46 fruits/ medicine plants

8. British officers were persuaded to allow
farmer user rights in betta forests. The
boundary was light.
Forests are close by and part of the
productive system, visited everyday, very
valuable and cherished.
The district has a 70% forest coverage.

9. Migration away from farm-forests to
cities
Rights discourse threatens takeover
of betta by farmers .
Landuse change: sale of land even
though threats from hydro power
generation averted in some parts of
Uttara Kannada

10. Landscapes and Forest
Check Posts in North
Sikkim

11. Rice Terraces and forests
near Gangtok
Cardamom plantations
in Mangan

12. Home gardents in Heegyathan
village, Dzongu, North Sikkim

13. In Sikkim, post 1975 (from independent
kingdom to an Indian state):
Forest management followed the usual method
of separation between forests and farms. Small
landholdings more than 65% in Sikkim
Prior to this people followed shifting cultivation
like most of the rest of the North East India.
Cyclical opening up of plots for multicrop
farming. Remaining plots were ‘regenerating
fallows’.

14. Living off farms without
forests
Large cardamom plantations introduced in
North Sikkim to improve the situation of
farmers who could now no longer access the
forest.
Cardamom failure, due to over harvest and
pests (Accidents that policies don’t plan for)
Integrated systems lost because of individual
property rights and hard divisions between
forests and farms.

15. Small holder farms and
community forestry in upland
areas:
Emerging Issues

16. Considered ‘Economically backward’
(Steep slopes, poor soils unsuitable for
large scale mainstream cultivation):
trapped in geography
Program interventions will continue;
dams, roads, plantations
Emphasis on maintaining forest cover;
exclusive conservation areas, sinks
(REDD+, sequestration)

17. Climate impacts; distress sale and migrations.
Land use change: resistance against dams in
Sikkim (land based identity politics)
Changed scenario due to cardamom failure?:
will resistance to land use change still persist

18. Repairing fractures

19. Reestablish farm-forest connections
Systems that allow diversity and choice
Encourage mobility for optimal use over
seasons and species
Emphasise collaborative user mechanisms
rather than property rights
Outcomes – better life experience, freedom
and control over life rather than a set of
itemised rights.