Assessment of the diverse roles of home gardens and their sustainable management for livelihood improvement in West Java, Indonesia

Home garden is a traditional agroforestry system, which is an ecologically and socio-economically sustainable land use system in West Java, Indonesia. It plays a fundamental role in providing subsistence food and income to local people through a multi-strata structure. Despite the importance of the home garden, which is strongly linked with quality of living, there is still a lack of quantitative data and information. Therefore, we quantified the economic and ecological characteristics of home gardens in the present study to evaluate their diverse roles. In addition, general strategies that are applicable to home gardens inWest Java were developed for sustainable management. The results of this study indicated that: (1) large landholding size showed a significantly higher Net Present Value (NPV) than small landholding size when the home gardens were dominated by fruit tree species, (2) species richness, species diversity, and carbon stock did not differ significantly among the different types and sizes of home gardens in West Java, and (3) multi-layered and diverse species composition is considerable for sustainable management of home gardens in terms of income generation and against urbanization and commercialization in West Java, Indonesia. Further studies should be considered for developing a standardized and generalized model that is able to evaluate and quantify the various ecosystem values that are generally acceptable and applicable in rural areas.