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INTRODUCTION
In India, social forestry implies growing trees on private, community, or government non-forest land primarily for meeting the local community's basic needs of fuelwood, small wood, and fodder and for providing a supplementary source of income to tree growers and the rural poor. Although the practice of growing trees by the Indian farmers is as old as the cultivation of crops, the National Commission on Agriculture in 1976 first articulated the need for government involvement in this activity on a significant scale. Consequently, social forestry projects were started by many of the State Governments in India in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Later, the National Forest Policy of 1988 also emphasised the role of social forestry as a source of raw materials for forest-based industries.
There exists substantial potential in India for social forestry. It is estimated that some 30 million hectares (mha) of private land and another 80 mha of common land in India are degraded and they are fit for only tree plantation. The common lands are owned by the State Governments and village panchayats (VPs). Under a variety of social welfare programmes, many State Governments are now granting government wastelands to the rural poor or Tree Growers' Co-operative Societies (TGCS) on long-term lease for tree growing. Thus some 110 mha of lands are available and suitable for farm forestry in India.
On the demand side also, there exists a huge unfulfilled demand for various farm forestry products, especially fuelwood, fodder and timber. In the year, 1987, the consumption of fuelwood and timber in India was 23.5 million cubic metres (M m^sup 3^) and 40 M m^sup 3^ respectively against the availability of 40 M in m^sup 3^ and 15 M m^sup 3^ from the forests (Oka, 1992, p. 345). According to Kaushal and Chimamani (1992, p. 205), if the all-India target of producing 200 M m^sup 3^ of wood set by the government is to be achieved by the year 2000, some 500 million seedlings will have to be planted every year in India. This indeed is a Herculean task for any nation to achieve, and especially so without people's involvement.
To exploit the potential of social forestry that exists in India, provision of technical information, high quality...