William Cavendish's study of 30 villages in the Shindi ward of Zimbabwe in the late 1990s provides a careful look at how the poor make use of nature-based income. Cavendish’s survey of nearly 200 households excluded farm income, concentrating on wild income from forests and other natural sources, particularly common areas in the public domain. He found that this kind of environmental income constituted over 35 percent of total household income. It was not usually obtained from one source, but many small sources combined. Households derived direct subsistence value from collecting firewood, consuming fruits and berries, and browsing their livestock. They received cash income from the sale of materials, fruits, medicines, or meat they had collected or hunted. They even derived some income from small-scale gold panning. Cavendish also found that the dependence of households on environmental income decreased as their average incomes rose. Although the poor tended to get more of their total income from the environment, the rich still made heavy use of natural products for income (Cavendish 2000:1979, 1990, 1991).

Other studies confirm Cavendish’s general findings.Research in South Africa found communities regularly using between 18 and 27 wild products, the most valuable again being fuelwood, construction wood, wild fruits and herbs, and fodder (Shackleton et al. 2000a:2). Quantities consumed per household can be substantial. Average annual usage figures of 5.3 metric tons of fuelwood, 104 kg of edible fruits, 58 kg of wild vegetables, and 185 large poles for house construction and fencing are typical in rural South Africa (Shackleton and Shackleton 2004:658; Shackleton et al. 2000a:2).

Subsistence use represents the greater part of the value of these natural products to households. Home use of wild products brings a direct reduction in cash expenditures of households— a form of income that is essential to the survival of the very poor. Estimated cash equivalents for subsistence use of wild products ranged from US$194 to US$1,114 per year over a series of seven studies in South Africa—a significant income fraction (Shackleton et al. 2000a:2).

But wild products can be a considerable source of cash income. In the Indian state of Kerala, residents in the Wayanand district sell wild foods such as honey and mushrooms, along with coveted gooseberries and other medicinal plants, earning an annual average of Rs. 3,500 (US$75) per household (Shylajan and Mythili 2003:109, 112-113). Likewise, medicinal-plant vendors in rural South Africa bring in significant cash, with a mean annual income of 16,700 rand (US$2,680) (Botha et al. 2004). At the other end of the scale, rural charcoal makers in Kenya sell a 30-35 kilogram bag of charcoal for a mere 280 Ksh (US$3.50) to middle men who transport it to Nairobi for cooking fuel (Kantai 2002:16). (See Table 2.2 Diverse Uses of Environmental Income.)

Gauging the importance of wild income to a poor family’s total income is difficult, of course, because the amount of such income is highly variable across families and across the seasons. In general, however, wild income tends to be more an auxiliary source rather than the main income source for most poor families. But there are many exceptions to this rule. For example, in some alpine villages in the Western Himalayas, wild income provides around 70 percent of household income, mostly from grazing of sheep and goats and the collection of medicines and herbs (Asher et al. 2002:20). If markets—such as tourists—are handy, wild income can be impressive. A skilled wood carver using native materials in Namibia, for example, can earn as much as US$1,800 per year by plying the tourist trade. In general, however, wild incomecontributes more modestly to total income, providing perhaps 15-40 percent of family income, if current studies are any guide (Shylajan and Mythili 2003:100-102; Cavendish 2000;Beck and Nesmith 2001).

Although the value of many wild products seems small when considered in isolation, their aggregate value can be substantial, and their contribution to rural economies crucial. In South Africa, Shackleton has estimated the value of wild products extracted by households in the savanna biome alone at 8 billion rand (US$1.3 billion) per year—a figure that works out to about R750-1,000 (US$120-160) per hectare of accessible land. That compares favorably with the economic productivity of cattle ranching and plantation forestry in these areas. In fact, when collection and sale of wild products is compared head tohead with other rural employment options, it often proves to be more lucrative. In Nigeria, research shows that returns on labor are 3-4 times higher for harvesting and selling woodland products than for agricultural wage labor (Shackleton et al. 2001:583; Shackleton and Shackleton 2004).

Unfortunately, the size and importance of these economic contributions often goes unnoticed. Such transactions belong to the informal economy, and are generally unaccounted for in official economic statistics.