Authored by Brad Czerniak

Farm Forestry (FF) presents opportunities for the improvement of rural livelihoods and biodiversity conservation in Uganda. In a recently implemented project (Integrating FF and Biodiversity Conservation), a multiplicity of grown trees presented great potential, but also constraints when it came to sustaining FF for biodiversity conservation_projects. The constraints can present major setbacks if actual values of crops and trees components on people's farm lands do not explicitly translate into economic values. Without undermining the explicit and implicit values of trees on the farm for biodiversity conservation, it is important to help communities realize the opportunity cost foregone by choosing to grow trees and conserving biodiversity. Through interactions with the tree farmers, the project collectively identified value addition, marketing of farm produce, and more formidable local campaigns as key missing links in sustaining FF and biodiversity conservation. The aim of this project was to build on that initial work and boost farm forestry among the various stakeholders in Sango bay, Rakai, in order to create deep rooted sustainability in terms of income, environment and wildlife conservation.

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