Tree Planting Is Not Agroforestry: Designing Programmes That Survive Year Three

The year-three test

Almost every agroforestry programme can show photographs from planting week. The meaningful question is what survives at year three — and whether anyone recorded enough at year zero to be able to say. Programmes without per-tree or per-plot baselines cannot distinguish mortality from measurement drift.

What has to be recorded at planting

Plot boundary, species mix, spacing and count, planting date, and the responsible cultivator. Without species and count, no allometric estimate is defensible later. Without the responsible cultivator, no maintenance obligation or benefit share can be attached.

Survival monitoring that people actually do

Annual full census is unaffordable at scale. A stratified sample by species, age and geography, combined with canopy trend from satellite for the whole area, gives a survival estimate with a stated confidence at a fraction of the cost — and flags the blocks where a physical visit is warranted.

Aligning incentives with survival

Payment structures that reward planting produce planting. Structures that stage payment against verified survival at defined intervals produce trees. This is a programme design decision, not a monitoring one, and it has to be made before the first sapling is bought.

Permanence and honesty

Trees on smallholder land are subject to household decisions over decades. Programmes should state the permanence assumptions they are making, the buffer they hold against reversal, and what happens if a farmer removes trees. Buyers increasingly read this section first.