Agroforestry applications and socio-economic evaluation

In this thesis, agroforestry practices in Turkey and socio-economically handled samples were prioritized in terms of monetary return on alternative combinations of agroforestry species in an area. For this purpose, traditional or planned-systematic agroforestry applications were observed in Bartın province, which was initially identified as a study area. As a result of the observations, it was determined which tree species, garden and forage crops combination gave priority to agroforestry in the region. In fact, in practice, it is known that breeders emphasize subjective decisions rather than objective criteria in determining these priorities. Moreover, as a result of these subjective priorities, it is seen that the benefit obtained from the unit area is not maximum. Therefore, the agroforestry species combinations determined within the scope of the study were calculated with Net Present Value (NPV) which is an objective criterion and takes into consideration the time value of money. Thus, species combinations with the highest economic yield in the unit area could be quantitatively determined. NBD calculations were carried out for an Agroforestry Application (AA) site with a size of one hectare. For NPV calculations, alternative tree species, garden and forage plants that are likely to grow in the AA site were determined first, and then alternative AA combinations were created from the combination of the species (tree, field and feed) that have the highest value by scoring them with the Ranking Technique. In this thesis, chestnut, peanut and poplar from forest tree species, tomato and black cabbage from agricultural plants, vetch and clover from feed plants are considered. In this way, 15 Alternative Agroforestry Application (AAA) scenarios (production combination) were developed in which species were evaluated together. Then each AAA scenario was calculated according to NPV criteria and the scenario with the highest economic return was determined. According to the results of the thesis study, the highest return in a hectare AA area is in the "Chestnut+Tomato" AAA scenario with 695.203 TL and the lowest return is in the "Poplar+Vetch" AAA scenario with 25.386 TL. In this case it can be stated that there is approximately 27 times the difference between the highest return and the lowest return.