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Income Generation
Community / The New Forests Company
The New Forests Company’s community development strategy focuses on primary health and education interventions initially. Once those long-term social infrastructure projects are set up, NFC moves more heavily into income generation projects so that community members can improve their own household incomes as well as contribute to more social infrastructure and social services in the future. The main income generation projects that NFC has been carrying out since its first season of planting are seedling-giveaways and road improvement. NFC feels that income generation projects are very important for community empowerment as well as the success of its other community development projects, because if the community can support themselves, they will be able to invest more heavily in much needed health and educational interventions. In 2010, NFC is focusing its income generation programme on turning the seedling giveaway into a professional outgrower scheme and introducing apiculture at Namwasa where the eucalyptus are flowering to make delicious honey.
Projects
Outgrower Scheme
When Uganda’s head of state, His Excellency President Museveni visited Namwasa plantation in 2006 to officially open the planting season, he challenged NFC to share their expertise and seedlings with the surrounding communities both for conservation and income generation. Since then, NFC has given away over 500,000 seedlings to the local communities in Uganda and is planning to give away another 600,000 heavily subsidized seedlings in 2010. NFC contributes the technical expertise and training and over 90% of the cost of the seedlings; the communities contribute their labour, costs in planting and maintenance, and just below 10% of the cost of the seedlings.
This benefits the company in many ways:
• If people plant trees around NFC’s borders they will be much more cautious to prevent fires to protect their trees, which protects NFC’s trees as well.
• If people have their own trees which they can use for firewood, they will not have a timber shortage and be tempted to cut down NFC’s trees.
• If people make money from the trees, they will be appreciative to NFC and take a keen interest in tree planting.
• If people are well trained in tree planting and maintenance and patient enough to wait 8 -10 years, NFC guarantees them a market and will buy back their grown trees increasing NFC’s timber quantity.
NFC began this idea with a seedling give-away programme which gave the seedlings for free to individuals without training and has since improved this model significantly. Farmers contribute about 10-15 Ugx per seedling so that they are making a sacrifice to take them and take the investment more seriously than they would if the seedlings were free. NFC also helps the communities form associations so that the training, distribution, and technical support is easier for NFC to administer and so that they can support each other and provide social accountability in ensuring quality tree planting. Finally, no one receives seedlings without having gone through a training in tree planting, establishment, maintenance, etc. Unfortunately, due to communally owned land policies in Mozambique, this project has not been successful there.
NFC is also going to focus in 2010 in developing a commercial outgrower scheme for people with larger plots of land (over 100 hectares) who want to plant trees. While the other scheme exists for the surrounding communities on a small scale, this programme will be more commercial and primarily focus on opportunities for NFC to increase its timber volumes in collaboration with local, independent businesspeople.
Community Woodlots
On top of the individual plantations that each community member can plant in their gardens, NFC’s outgrower scheme also targets existing civil society organizations like schools, churches, mosques, etc. to plant woodlots on their property for income generation as an organization. NFC provides the seedlings, while the organization members contribute the labour and other costs for planting and maintenance. Organizations appreciate the community woodlot projects for many reasons. Not only does it provide the organizations with an additional source of income, but it also provides a practical educational tool for science, conservation, and business. The school woodlots in particular promote the importance of conservation and tree planting from a very young age which impacts both the pupils’ and their parents’ generations. The woodlots also provide a source of firewood to cook which can otherwise be both costly and inconvenient to collect. This programme is successful in both Mozambique and Uganda.
Apiculture
Our next primary focus in 2010 is developing an apiculture scheme. Like the outgrower scheme, bee keeping and honey harvesting promotes the direct income benefits of trees within the surrounding communities. Eucalyptus honey is very good quality honey, so the communities can thoroughly appreciate the benefits of the forests, tree planting and conservation. NFC will support the communities by assisting them to form apiculture associations, similar to the outgrower associations, again for social accountability and support throughout the programme. NFC will then assist them with technical support and subsidized supplies like protective gear and hives. Once they begin harvesting honey, NFC will support them to find access to market and develop their own businesses or cooperatives so that their hives can be sustainable and they can continue growing their number of hives on their own.
Road Construction
Another challenge the communities identified in the Participatory Rural Appraisal exercise was poor roads and lack of access to market. NFC has had to create and maintain many kilometres of roads on plantation for operations. It has also graded and maintained about 45 km of community roads. The communities provide the unskilled labour to clear and then maintain the roads and NFC provides the machinery and fuel. The community has really appreciated this project because it eases their access to local markets and makes them more mobile by shortening the amount of time it takes to get from one place to another. However, the communities have not been as committed to road maintenance as they originally promised to do which decreases the lifespan of the road. Before NFC invests heavily in more roads, we will work with the communities to improve these maintenance practices.
Our current projects are:
