Crop losses and their economic implications due to growing of Eucalyptus on field bunds — a pilot study

摘要

The paper presents evidence, collected mainly through interviews with farmers in north-west India, regarding crop losses suffered by the farmers planting Eucalyptus on farm bunds. Farmers experienced that the crop remained weak in a width of strip measuring 2 to 10 metres next to the tree line. These losses drastically reduced the profits farmers were expecting from the sale of trees. The average B-C Ratio at 15 discount rate would have been 9.2 without these losses, but came down to just about 2, when crop losses were taken into account. The reduced profit margin was not perceived to be sufficiently high to cover risk of production and of fluctuating output prices, and therefore none of the farmers replanted Eucalyptus after sale. Many even uprooted the coppice roots and went back to annual cropping.