Financial Feasibility of Simultaneous Production of Pine Sawlogs, Forage, and Meat Goats on Small Farms in Alabama: A Preliminary Analysis

Small and limited resource farmers and landowners in the Alabama Black Belt region face many challenges as they seek to make their farms and forestlands profitable, productive and environmentally sustainable. A host of problems—farmland conversion, urbanization pressures, reductions in water quality and availability, soil erosion, irregular cash flows, and increased government regulation—make managing family farms or forestland a difficult task. In response to these challenges, many farmers and landowners are considering agroforestry as an opportunity to increase land productivity and to improve their cash flows by combining income from agriculture, forestry, and animal production on the same piece of land. The objective in this paper was to conduct economic evaluations of agroforestry practices so that landowners, extension personnel, and other decision makers can correctly assess the potential of agroforestry practices among the many land-use options. The data analyzed were collected from a four year silvopastoral study conducted in the Black Belt region, on the property of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Epes, Alabama.