Twenty-first century forest plantations: development of agroforestry in Haryana

This paper is a bit of a departure for a scientifi c journal. It offers two stories of farmers adopting agroforestry in the state of Haryana, where widespread progress in agroforestry has taken place. Each story describes the development of agroforestry at ground level in a very personal manner. The best part is that it is primarily an account of the working of the marketplace, with landowners and wood users responding to market incentives. Even through in India, the practice of planting trees for use has been in vogue since time immemorial, commercial planting of trees in the country began only in 1977, when Switzerland-based WIMCO, a matchbox-making company, planted clonal varieties of poplar in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab. Since then farmers in Haryana— home to Yamuna Nagar, the largest wood market of northern India—have developed vast plantations of poplar and clonal eucalyptus. This paper explains the story of these two plantations.