Agroforestry is often seen as a sustainable land-use system for agricultural production providing ecosystem services. Intercropping with food crops leads to equal or higher productivity than monoculture and results in food production for industry and subsistence. Low rubber price and low labor productivity in smallholdings have led to a dramatic conversion of rubber plantations to more profitable crops. The literature analysis performed in this paper aimed at better understanding the ins and outs that could make rubber-based agroforestry more attractive for farmers. A comprehensive search of references was conducted in March 2023 using several international databases and search engines. A Zotero library was set up consisting of 415 scientific references. Each reference was carefully read and tagged in several categories: cropping system, country, main tree species, intercrop type, intercrop product, level of product use, discipline of the study, research topic, and intercrop species. Of the 232 journal articles, 141 studies were carried out on rubber agroforestry. Since 2011, the number of studies per year has increased. Studies on rubber-based agroforestry systems are performed in most rubber-producing countries, in particular in Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Brazil. These studies focus more or less equally on perennials (forest species and fruit trees), annual intercrops, and mixed plantations. Of the 47 annual crops associated with rubber in the literature, 20 studies dealt with rice, maize, banana, and cassava. Agronomy is the main discipline in the literature followed by socio-economy and then ecology. Only four papers are devoted to plant physiology and breeding. The Discussion Section has attempted to analyze the evolution of rubber agroforestry research, progress in the selection of food crop varieties adapted to agroforestry systems, and to draw some recommendations for rubber-based agroforestry systems associated with food crops.

Conservation Agriculture (CA) has been promoted during the last 15 years in Madagascar to develop a sustainable rainfed agriculture in order to cope with low fertility upland soils, soil erosion, low productivity and erratic rainfall. If CA does provide a better sustainability with adapted cropping patterns when adopted, a question is, whether CA is able to alleviate the impact of climatic variations thanks to the mulching effect and to which extent. We took the example of medium altitude zones in the Lake Alaotra area to illustrate farmers’ perceptions. If climate change is not proven in these areas, climatic variations are very high and erratic rainfall patterns at the beginning of the rainy season induce serious risks of crop failure. Two surveys were implemented in 2013: (i) on CA changing practices of 92 farmers (during the 10 years project duration) and (ii) on the evolution of behavior among 28 farmers who have recently adopted CA (less than 5 years). In CA systems, the mulch contributes to better cropping systems resilience and helps alleviating the effect of climatic variations. If a limited number of farmers have effectively adopted CA practices, in the long run, most farmers have developed innovative cropping systems between conventional agriculture and CA, to address their own constraints, leading to a widespread range of agro-ecological practices. A typology of behavior is presented to identify farmers’ strategies regarding risks in a context characterized by multiple uncertainties. L’agriculture de conservation (AC) a été promue au cours des 15 dernières années à Madagascar pour développer une agriculture pluviale durable sous fortes contraintes : sols à faible fertilité, érosion des sols, faible productivité et pluies irrégulières. Si l’AC offre une meilleure durabilité avec des modes de culture adaptés, la question est de savoir si elle peut réduire l’impact des variations climatiques grâce à l’effet de paillage (mulch). Nous avons pris l’exemple des zones d’altitude moyenne dans la région du lac Alaotra pour illustrer les perceptions des agriculteurs. Si les changements climatiques ne sont pas prouvés dans ces zones, les variations climatiques sont très importantes et les précipitations irrégulières au début de la saison des pluies induisent de forts risques de mauvaises récoltes. Deux enquêtes ont été mises en œuvre en 2013 : sur l’évolution des pratiques d’AC de 92 agriculteurs (sur la durée du projet de 10 ans) et sur l’évolution du comportement de 28 agriculteurs qui ont récemment adopté l’AC (moins de 5 ans). Dans les systèmes en AC, le mulch contribue à améliorer la résilience des systèmes de culture et aide à réduire l’effet des variations climatiques. Si un nombre limité d’agriculteurs ont effectivement adopté des pratiques en AC, à long terme, la plupart des agriculteurs ont mis au point des modèles de culture intermédiaires entre l’agriculture conventionnelle et l’AC pour répondre à leurs propres contraintes, aboutissant à une vaste gamme de pratiques agro-écologiques. Une typologie des comportements est présentée pour identifier les stratégies des agriculteurs concernant les risques dans un contexte caractérisé par de multiples incertitudes.

The study took place in southern Thailand, in Phatthalung province, and is part of “Heveadapt,” a Franco-Thai research project. The aim of this project was to show how smallholder rubber plantations can adapt and remain sustainable in the face of variable climatic conditions and deep changes in socio-economic context. Among the various types of cropping systems, agroforestry practices were identified as promising. Rubber agroforestry systems (AFS) are economically more productive than rubber monocrop plantations and give more flexibility to smallholders, in particular when rubber prices are low, which has been the case since 2013. However, adoption of AFS during the mature period of the plantations is very low in Thailand. The policy to boost rubber agroforestry practices still needs to be developed with all local stakeholders. The objectives of the study were to identify the possibilities and capacities to use current AFS dynamic networks as a basis to set up a rubber agroforestry innovation platform. The research team studied: i) farmers’ collective organizations, groups or networks with rubber AFS partially or entirely and ii) the social dynamic enabling the sharing of knowledge and know-how. An individual producer’s grid, with original farmers or strong knowledge with ease of sharing, was also studied. The role of local institutions involved in the promotion of rubber AFS was also analyzed. This allowed us to design an innovation platform and to define activities that suit the socio-economic context of Phatthalung province. The main aims of the platform are to promote cooperation among innovative producers and the transmission between them of knowledge and know-how about rubber AFS. This could an efficient tool that Thai rubber institutions could set up to encourage the adoption of rubber AFS by farmers.