Impacts of agro forestry practices on the livelihood of farmers in Namasagali sub county Kamuli district-Uganda

Abstract

The study assessed the impacts of agroforestry practices on livelihood of farmers in Namasagali Sub- County in Kamuli district. The study was carried out in five zones of the two villages of Kisaikye and Kavuule. Descriptive survey design was used where semi-structured questionnaires were used to obtain data from selected households. Sampling methods were used to select respondents from the two villages where simple random, purposive and snowball sampling techniques were employed to collect data from a sample size of 70. Kobo collect was used to develop electronic questionnaires which were used to collect data on household socio economic status, the impacts of agroforestry practices on farmers, challenges faced by agroforestry farmers and the different strategies that were put in place to increase the adoption of agroforestry practices. SPSS version 20 was used to analyze data and the results show that most agroforestry farmers had experienced an impact of climate modification (22.5%) and nutritional security (22%). It was discovered that most farmers practiced silvo pasture (33.3%) and majority had grown maize (26.9%) as the dominant crop and had majorly integrated jack fruit and mango trees (22.2%). Most farmers were faced with a challenge of limited land (33.3%) which limited them from practicing agroforestry on a large scale. Results show that most farmers had joined farmer groups (35.7%) as the main strategy to increase adoption of agroforestry. Results also show that farmers who had adopted agroforestry had attained an improvement in their overall financial situation from tree products like timber, fruits, firewood for charcoal burning. It is concluded that farmers with larger household size are more likely to practice agroforestry practices than farmers with smaller household size and also shows that most of the farmers who were more likely to adopt agroforestry had a bigger land acreage for planting more trees. It is recommended that the government should intervene to support agroforestry farmers through provision of extension services, subsides or incentives.