Farmers' performances in participatory tree crop development and land management for fire prevention in Jambi Province, Indonesia

The Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops and Japan International Cooperation Agency initiated a participatory forest fire prevention program at two site villages in Jambi Province, Indonesia in 1997, aiming to prevent wild fires around protected forests by intensifying communities' land use with tree crops. This article analyzes farmers' performances in the program and its effects on fire prevention until 2000. Critical issues to fire prevention were inflammable undergrowth spreading fast on farmers' land after discontinuation of their cultivation by wild boars' crop raiding as well as their careless land burning in community consultations. Based on their proposal, an integrated green belt (IGB) was developed with a wire fence, a ditch, and perennial or annual crops on their land around forests to solve these problems. Farmers participated actively in fencing, ditching and tree planting, helped by safeguard of their farming against pests and favorable marketing of cash crops. Their improved land use with increased crops contributed to reducing inflammable vegetation and free land burning. Farmers were motivated to prevent wild fires, given tree crops. However, farmers' selfreliance was limited in land management and tree planting that they proposed for shortage of their skills, capital or labor, which resulted in considerable material and financial provisions under the IGB program. Communities can hardly achieve extensive tree planting and internalization of introduced activities simultaneously at their villages. The IGB was more advantageous to settler farmers adept in land cultivation and cropping than local farmers relying on surrounding natural resources. Effects of participatory fire prevention models depend on farmers' self-help abilities of land management and cropping to minimize fire prone vegetation and land burning by meeting their farming needs, availability of capital, labor and information to improve the abilities, and crop markets as well as model simplicity. A single model is not equally effective among communities with different resource use, requiring diversification.