Income from wild products is only a part of the environmental income equation. Agricultural income is just as crucial. Only when income from agriculture is combined with the income from wild products do we begin to get a clear idea of how important ecosystem goods and services are as a source of rural livelihoods.
A study of households (rich and poor) in the Masvingo Province in southeastern Zimbabwe provides a good example of how agricultural income complements wild income and how it compares with other income sources such as wages and remittances. As Figure 2.2 Household Income By Source, Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe shows, agricultural income— from crops and home gardens—contributed 30 percent of total household income (cash and subsistence income combined). Livestock rearing—a modified form of agriculture that relies on wild forage—contributed another 21 percent. Wild products from woodlands contributed 15 percent. Together, these elements of environmental income sum to 66 percent of total income. In other words, goods and services from ecosystems contribute two-thirds of family incomes in rural Zimbabwe. The remaining 34 percent came from wage labor, income from home industries, and remittances. For the poorest of these rural households, dependence on these different kinds of environmental income is even higher, providing a full 70 percent of total income when combined (Campbell et al. 2002:89-95).
The balance between agricultural income and wild income varies by location, with agriculture supplying more income in some areas, and wild income more in others. For example, a recent survey in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh, India, found that agriculture provided 58 percent of total income of the poorest families, with livestock and wild income providing another 12 percent. In this district, farming is the main occupation, with over 90 percent of the workforce employed in agriculture. But families in Jhabua also supplement their incomes with livestock-rearing and collection of various forest products, such as wood fuel, fodder, tendu leaves, and mahua flowers (Narain et al. 2005:6, 14). (See Figure 2.3 Sources of Income For Poor Households in Jhabua, India.)
