Solution of Energy Crisis in Rural Areas Lies in Farm Forestry

Abstract

The struggle to obtain fuelwood for cooking food is the real energy crisis in rural India as the problems connected with increased use of soft coke' kerosene oil' vegetable wastes' dung cakes and gobar gas leave only the fuelwood to be increasingly depended upon to supply energy to rural population. Anticipated demand ror fuelwood far exceeds the expected supply. Energy plantations to be raised by forest department on forest areas' village waste lands and panchayat lands may not alone solve the problem in view of resources constraints' and difficulties in establishment and management or such plantations and also in transport and sale of fuelwood to rural populatin scattered in villages not always served by roads. Farm Forestry to be practised by villagers' thus' appears be a more practical proposition to solve energy crisis in rural areas,