Economics of homestead forestry and their management activities at Fatickchari Upazila of Chittagong district, Bangladesh

摘要

An exploratory study was carried out to identify the homestead tree resources, their utilization pattern, economic return of major fruit and timber tree species, their management activities for sustainable production as well as constraints of homestead plantation in Fatickchari Upazila of Chittagong district, Bangladesh over the period of six months by using multistage random sampling design of 96 households categorized into marginal (>0.02-0.08 ha), small (0.08-0.14 ha), medium (>0.14-0.20 ha) and large (>0.20 ha) based on homestead areas. Sample households were selected randomly taking three from each category in each ward. Total number of tree species was increased with the increase in homestead areas. In case of socio-economic aspects of the respondents, it was found that tree variety (%) has a gradual increasing trend with increase of education level. However, relative tree density (%) was found to have increasing trend with education up to higher secondary level and after that there was a slight decreasing trend. People involve in agriculture have got higher tree density (31%) compared to other occupations such as; service (28%), business (24%) and daily labour (17%). The investment analysis revealed that longer time investment on fruit and timber tree species is profitable. Lack of technical knowledge of growing trees, unavailability of space and good quality seed/seedlings were the major constraints of homestead forestry production. This study may be useful baseline information to forest policy makers in Bangladesh.