The "plant and share" contract in Côte d'Ivoire. Incomplete contracting and land conflicts

This paper tackles the broad issue of contract incompleteness, property rights and conflicts in the context of rural Côte d'Ivoire. Since the beginning of the 2000s, a new type of contractual arrangement is developing rapidly: the "Plant & Share" contract. The central principle of this type of arrangement is that the landowner (usually an autochthon) provides the land to a farmer (usually a migrant) who develops a perennial tree crop plantation, i.e., supplies the seedlings, the fertilizers and the labor until production starts. When the plantation starts to produce, three types of sharing arrangements (usually by half, exceptionally 1/3 for the landowner and 2/3 for the farmer) occur, depending on what is shared: (i) the plantation (the landowner retaining his/her ownership right to the land bearing the farmer's part of the plantation); (ii) the plantation and the land (i.e., thru the contract, the farmer builds an ownership right not only on the plantation, but also on the land bearing his share of the plantation); (iii) the production (the land remaining the property of the landowner and the plantation being de facto co-owned by the assignor and the taker). Like most institutional arrangements in rural Côte d'Ivoire, P&S contracts remain usually "informal" in the sense that there is no legal validation of the transaction by a public authority. Beyond their "informal" nature, P&S contracts are quite incomplete. Some elements of the arrangement are rarely or never specified explicitly: the length of the contract, the right to transfer the plantation, the technical process involved in the creation of the plantation, etc. In their current form, P&S contracts therefore convey a real potential for conflicts between landowners and farmers. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into the rationale for the rapid spread of this new institutional arrangement. Its incompleteness is discussed as well as its potentially conflictive features. The paper also shows how this contract, in spite of its incompleteness, constitutes an alternative to much more conflictive land "sales" that currently dominate the land transfers market in the country. A discussion of the socio-political embeddedness of contractual practices is thus provided. Aside from the authors' long time field research investment in Côte d'Ivoire, the paper draws on data coming from two sources: a survey realized by F. Ruf in 2001 (600 farms), and a survey realized by J.-Ph. Colin in 2008 (269 farms). (résumé d'auteur

Visual Asset Design Promotion Ciwidey Gambung Tea Plantation Agrotourism Area

Agro Tourism The Gambung Ciwidey tea plantation is one of the agrotourism in Bandung Regency. This agrotourism is located in the Gambung tea plantation. It is unfortunate with the many potentials there but not many people know about the existence of this agrotourism. It is necessary to design a promotion with effective media, so that the public knows the whereabouts of this place and is interested in visiting the Ciwidey Tea Plantation Agro Tourism. The obstacle faced by Gambung Ciwidey Tea Plantation Agro Tourism is the lack of promotional media used, as well as limited information. In solving this problem, researchers will use promotional material through the medium of photography. Where pho-tography techniques will be used in taking photo objects with composition techniques such as symmetrical composition, the rule of thirds, and the golden rule. It is hoped that the promotion of this material can contribute to the community in the Gambung tea plantation which requires promotional materials to introduce the Gambung Ciwidey tea plantation agrotourism widely to the public and invite tourists to visit this place. Key word : Promotion, Photography, Agrotouris

Plantation forests and biodiversity conservation

There are five key reasons why biodiversity conservation should be considered a part of plantation management. (1) The plantation estate is large, and balancing various land management values with wood and pulp production is important when extensive areas of land are involved. (2) The locations and management of new plantations will affect the biota that currently exist in such landscapes. (3) Maintaining some elements of biodiversity within plantations can have benefits for stand productivity and the maintenance of key ecosystem processes such as pest control. (4) The retention (or loss) of biota in plantations is relevant to the formulation of ecological standards and the certification of plantations in many parts of the world. (5) Plantation forestry has a narrow and intensive management focus on producing a forest crop for a limited array of purposes. It will not meet future societal demands for a range of outputs from plantations (in addition to wood and pulp supply), and will not be congruent with the principles of ecological sustainability. This paper briefly reviews the biodiversity conservation values of Australian plantation s. It shows that almost all work in Australian plantations, whether conifer or eucalypt, highlights the importance of landscape heterogeneity and stand structural complexity for enhancing biodiversity. Management of plantations to promote landscape heterogeneity and stand structural complexity and enhance the conservation of biodiversity will, in many cases, involve tradeoffs that will affect wood and pulp production. The extent to which this occurs will depend on the objectives of plantation management and how far they extend towards the more complex plantation forestry models that incorporate social and environmental values. We argue that the widespread adoption of plantation forestry that leads to homogenous stands of extensive monocultures will risk re-creating the array of negative environmental outcomes that have been associated with agriculture in many parts of Australia

Forest Plantation Management

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Seasonal Flight Patterns of Hemiptera (Excluding Miridae) in a Southern Illinois Black Walnut Plantation

The seasonal flight patterns of 99 species and subspecies of Hemiptera collected in window traps in a southern Illinois black walnut plantation are compared with similar data from a North Carolina black walnut plantation. Flying height distributions and seasonal flight activities of Corythucha juglandis, Orius insidiosus, Piesma cinerea, Acanthocephala terminalis, Alydus eurinus, Sehirus cinctus cinctus, Acrosternum hilare, Brochymena quadripustutata, Euschistus servus, and Euschistus variolarius are considered in detail

Increasing sub/tropical eucalypt timber plantation profitability by value adding to thinnings

New processing options and end-uses are being developed to create larger, more stable and higher-value markets for plantation-sourced wood. To justify continued expansion of Australia's current hardwood plantation estate it is becoming necessary to develop higher value end-uses for, both pulpwood and smaller 'sawlog' resources. To improve its profitability and win new markets, the industry needs to use stems currently culled during thinnings as they have little or no economic value. This paper describes current Australian R&D into value adding to improve economic returns from small diameter (12 - 25 cm), 8-15 year old sub/tropical hardwood plantation thinnings. The product focus is raised far above the pulpwood commodity baseline to maximise the value of the fibre harvested. Small spindleless veneer lathe technology has been used to optimize the processing of this resource. Results are clearly indicating that the early age hardwood plantation resource, previously thought to be unusable, can be processed to yield valuable structural grade veneer. Plywood and Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL) products have been manufactured and tested utilising multiple construction strategies. New market-relevant options, such as innovative hybrid/composite pole products, arched and straight light structural round members and hardwood veneer-based engineered structural products, are discussed and compared with more traditional sawing approaches. These offer economically viable avenues to more profitable operations in smaller-scale plantation resources and using smaller log sizes than required for conventional peeling, pulping and sawmilling uses. (Résumé d'auteur

The Ideal and the Real: Southern Plantation Women of the Civil War

Southern plantation women experienced a shift in identity over the course of the Civil War. Through the diaries of Catherine Edmondston and Eliza Fain, historians note the discrepancy between the ideal and real roles women had while the men were off fighting. Unique perspectives and hidden voices in their writings offer valuable insight into the life of plantation women and the hybrid identity they gained despite the Confederate loss

Documentation of Ancestral Caddo Ceramic Vessels from Sites in Red River County, Texas

The vessel collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas (TARL) have ancestral Caddo vessels from a number of sites along the Red River in the Mound Prairie area. Vessels are documented in this article from four such sites, including Wright Plantation (41RR7), Howard Hampton Farm (41RR10), Sam Kaufman (41RR16), and the Abe Cox Place (with no trinomial), in the vicinity of the Rowland Clark site (41RR77). I also discuss a small ceramic sherd assemblage at TARL from the Wright Plantation site

Governing teak furniture business : a global value-chain system dynamic modeling approach

Indonesian teak forest plantation contributes to more than 35% of world teak forests. Perhutani, a state owned company, manages one million Ha of teak plantation area, while local communities manages teak agro-forests outside the state forest that amounts to 160,000 Ha. Javanese teak provides employments and livelihoods to millions of people. However, teak related income distribution is rarely known as well as future scenarios to make it fairer and sustainable viable to teak growers. This paper describes the use of systems dynamics to mimic value chain of teak from the forest to the final furniture market using phases of conceptual design, model specification, model evaluation and model uses. The model comprises Perhutani plantation teak, community agro-forest, teak log trading, furniture manufacturing and market. From the trends we observe Indonesian furniture role in world market is shrinking. The power asymmetry makes the furniture small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and teak growers get a small share of value added. Scenarios of boosting teak planting, fair trade and upgrading SMEs through vertical integration with lead firms can improve the sustainability of teak furniture business and enhance incomes of the poorest actors within the teak value chain. (Résumé d'auteur

Climate change policy distortions in the wood and food market

The widespread shift of Australia’s wood products industry away from native forests to an agricultural regime–wood plantations–has enhanced forestry industry competitiveness. Wood now competes against food for agricultural land, water and other resources (including government support). New plantings have increased substantially since the mid 1990s via plantation managed investment schemes (MIS), arousing protest in the traditional agricultural sector and claims of unfair government policy treatment. This claim is investigated in an analysis that integrates the taxation treatment of plantation MIS with economics and forestry industry knowledge. Three methods are developed, and applied, to estimate the plantation MIS tax-based subsidy. Preliminary estimates indicate a tax-based subsidy to forestry through plantation MIS of between $0.9-1.2 billion over the five years ending 2008. The estimated subsidy is then incorporated in the Productivity Commission’s calculations of the effective rate of assistance (ERA) to industry groups from tariff, budget outlay and tax-based government policy. The ERA to Forestry & logging in 2008 was estimated to be 41.8 per cent: government assistance is equivalent to 42 per cent of Forestry & logging’s unassisted value added. The estimated plantation MIS tax based subsidy accounted for 77 per cent of the assistance. Assistance to Forestry & logging exceeds substantially the assistance (including drought related payments) to food growers: 7.2 per cent to Grain, sheep & beef and 17.3 per cent to Dairy cattle farming (a significant proportion was assistance that ceased in April 2008). A detailed examination of Australia’s proposed climate change policy concerning the land use sector indicates that agricultural resource use distortions created through plantation MIS arrangements are lightly to intensify.Environmental Economics and Policy,