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An overall land user perspective constitutes a neces- wide range of products, services, and concerns beyond cash
sary but not quite sufficient condition for serving women's crops, livestock, and staple grains.
interests in agroforestry. The explicit acceptance of Beyond their concerns in crop and livestock production,
women as valid clients in their own right would permit the women's responsibility for household water and energy supbroadest participation of women whether or not they are in plies gives them a special interest in the long term mainhouseholds headed by men or heads of their own households, tenance of the natural resource base (soil, water, vegetaand are artisans, processors, merchants, smallholders, or tion). Researchers must pay specific attention to the
landless laborers. history of resource use and condition, and to potential
This is not to say that women's issues should be improvements in soil conservation, watershed management,
absorbed into a single homogenized agenda. There is still and management of range and forest lands (Rocheleau and
a need to disaggregate information, decisions, and action Hoek 1984).
to assure reasonable and equitable distribution of land,
trees and their products, and program costs and benefits to multiple Users
all clients. A land user perspective with equity must deal
with women's relationship to the larger community as well Any program that purports to serve the majority of
as with the very real differences between groups of women, rural people is by definition dealing with a diverse array
based on class, age, ethnicity, and sources of livelihood, of land users, many of whom are women. Even projects speA brief outline of a land user perspective for agro- cifically geared to "target groups", such as farmers, will
forestry research and development illustrates how it can find that their target group may include non-farming land
serve various women's interests. users. Farmers also depend on a number of items they do
A LAND USER PERSPECTIVE FOR EQUITY IN AGROFORESTRY not produce, such as gathered products. Farmers' livelihoods may be inextricably tied to those of gatherers, proMultiple Uses cessors, merchants, artisans, farmworkers, herders, or
forest dwellers.
Within a target group loosely defined as farmers there
Agroforestry is a land use system, not a commodity. it may also be several types of actors, often-women, who
can address a wide range of rural people's priorities for neither own nor manage the farm. Women and children in
fulfillment of basic needs (Raintree 1983). Agroforestry farm households perform such essential operations as paid
practices may apply to cash crops, subsistence crops, ani- and unpaid farm labor, child care, home management, domesmal production, and gathered products, as well as to farm tic and commmercial processing, gathering of goods for farm
infrastructure and to the soil, water, and natural vegeta- household use or sale, and management of livestock and
tion on the site. Among the major needs that are affected household gardens. If all women land users are to be fully
by agroforestry are: food, water, fuel, cash income, shel- served as clients, then agroforestry research and action
ter and infrastructure, savings/investment, and resources must also address gathering, processing, trade and consumpto meet social obligations. tion as well as production processes in the farm household
A land user approach to the development and implemen- and community system.
tation of agroforestry technologies requires design and For example, agroforestry technology design should conevaluation according to a complex set of criteria that goes sider landless men and women, who tend to depend more
far beyond simple economic cost and benefit. heavily on gathering than the population-at-large in many
Considerations of need, preference, and multiple use must farming communities. Whereas wealthier women may gather
be balanced against available resources, required inputs, more on their own land or have easy access to other lands,
risk, and expected yields. landless people and women small-holders share problems of
In rural areas all over the world, women are providers insecure access to shared collection areas. A change in
of a wide range of subsistence goods, including water, the cropping system, a new chemical herbicide, or a change
fuel, food, fodder for confined animals, fiber for handi- in tree species in bush-fallows may have important "side
crafts and other "minor" products of range, forest and effects" on gatherers. Agroforestry technologies can be
fallow lands. As such, they have much to gain from .specifically tailored to maintain or increase the flow of
development approaches like agroforestry that incorporate a "by-products" to particular groups, including women.