Greening the Future: Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies in India

India sits on a paradox. On one hand, nearly 96 million hectares – about 29% of the country’s total geographic area – is undergoing active land degradation. On the other, the country has set ambitious targets to restore 26 million hectares and create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes by 2030 under its commitments to the Paris Agreement. Bridging that gap requires not just policy, but people. That is precisely where Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies (TGCS) come in – a grassroots institutional model that puts the responsibility of greening wastelands directly into the hands of rural communities.

What are Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies? 🔗

Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies are village-level organisations formed specifically to undertake plantation activities on degraded revenue wastelands, government lands, and panchayat lands. They operate on the cooperative principle – members pool their labour, share the responsibilities of managing the plantation, and collectively benefit from the produce. Unlike state-run afforestation programmes, the land management and financial decisions are eventually handed over to the community itself.

The model was inspired by the success of the Anand dairy cooperative pattern. In 1985, the Wasteland Development Board (WDB) approached the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) to structure and financially support a tree growers’ cooperative to green wastelands, adapting the same bottom-up philosophy that had transformed India’s milk economy into a framework for forestry. The idea was simple: if dairy cooperatives could work at the village level, why not tree growing?

The institutional backbone: NTGCF 🔗

The National Tree Growers’ Co-operative Federation (NTGCF) was established in 1988 with the primary objective of restoring ecological security in eco-fragile and marginalised zones. Headquartered in Anand, Gujarat, the NTGCF functions as the apex body that supports village-level TGCS units across multiple states.

The NTGCF provides the initial structuring and funding, but – crucially – management of each cooperative, including financial management, is transferred to the community within five years of establishment. Revenue wastelands of roughly 40 hectares are leased to a cooperative for 15 to 20 years. The cooperative’s members are paid for the labour they provide in undertaking afforestation. When they wish to collect grass, fodder, or fuelwood from the plantation for themselves, they pay the cooperative – ensuring the society remains financially self-sustaining.

The NTGCF has promoted village-level TGCS in six states, and through these efforts, nearly 11 million trees have been planted, generating fuelwood, fodder, and employment benefits for rural communities. The carbon sequestration gains and the establishment of processing units for value-added products are additional outcomes of this work.

The policy context: why TGCS were needed 🔗

The National Forest Policy of 1988 marked a turning point in India’s approach to forests. It shifted the focus from timber extraction and revenue generation to environmental stability, ecological restoration, and active community participation. The policy set a national goal of bringing at least one-third of the country’s total land area under forest or tree cover – a target that remained out of reach without decentralised, community-driven action.

Around the same time, the National Wasteland Development Board (NWDB) identified Tree Growers’ Cooperative Societies as key institutions for organising people for wasteland rehabilitation. Two major public sector cooperative organisations – the National Dairy Development Board and the Indian Farmers Fertilisers Co-operative Ltd. – began founding such societies across different parts of India starting in 1986. This government backing gave TGCS the institutional legitimacy and initial capital they needed to function.

The 1980s thus saw tree growers’ cooperative societies emerge as one of India’s earliest and most structured forest restoration initiatives, preceding Joint Forest Management (JFM) and the National Afforestation Programme that followed in later decades.

How a TGCS functions on the ground 🔗

A typical TGCS is best suited to a village with 60 to 150 households. The cooperative is generally encouraged in compact, singular village settings to avoid disputes over adjacent areas. Once constituted, revenue wasteland is leased to the society and plantation work begins. Members are encouraged to plant native, endemic species to maintain ecological balance and support local biodiversity.

The financial model is straightforward. Members earn wages for plantation labour. A portion of the timber – typically around 20% – is used commercially, with proceeds going back into the cooperative’s fund. The remaining 80% is managed for fuelwood, fodder, and community needs. Importantly, unlike JFM arrangements, there is no benefit-sharing with a second party – all returns accrue directly to the community.

The cooperative also serves as a social deterrent against encroachment. Wherever cooperatives have been established, encroached lands have been voluntarily returned by encroachers who recognise the community benefit of managed plantations – something that state enforcement had repeatedly failed to achieve. In some cases, panchayat lands were even converted into revenue wastelands so that villages could use those lands to run the cooperative.

Environmental contributions of TGCS 🔗

The environmental impact of TGCS goes well beyond the number of trees planted. Afforestation of ravines, saline lands, and other degraded village commons directly addresses soil erosion, reduces runoff, and helps recharge groundwater. The Vatra Tree Growers’ Co-operative Society in Gujarat, for instance, afforested 40 hectares of totally degraded village common land – ravines and saline lands in an arid region. A dedicated portion of this area was also reserved for grass production to ensure the livelihoods of cattle-herding communities were not disrupted.

Once plantation cover is established, water table levels improve, wildlife returns, and native plant species – including those used in traditional medicine – regenerate naturally. These are not just ecological benefits; they represent a restoration of community resources that rural households depend on for their daily lives.

At the national scale, India has committed under the Paris Agreement to creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes through forest and tree cover by 2030. Community-managed plantation societies like TGCS contribute meaningfully to this target, especially in regions where state-run afforestation efforts have had limited reach.

Socio-economic benefits for members 🔗

One of the most significant contributions of TGCS is employment generation, particularly for landless rural households and tribal communities. Members are paid wages for plantation work – a direct income source in areas where livelihood options are scarce. Over time, as the plantation matures, communities benefit from fuelwood, fodder, and non-timber forest products, reducing their household expenditure and dependence on distant markets.

Tree planting under India’s 20-Point Programme was integrated into employment-linked schemes like the National Rural Employment Programme and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme, which formally recognised afforestation as a vehicle for rural job creation. TGCS built on this foundation by giving communities a proprietary stake in the plantation’s outcomes, not just a daily wage.

Women’s participation has also been a dimension of TGCS, though its extent varies by region. The National Forest Policy 1988 explicitly called for a peoples’ movement involving women to achieve afforestation goals – an aspiration that TGCS were partly designed to operationalise at the grassroots level.

Challenges faced by TGCS 🔗

Despite their promise, Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies face a persistent set of challenges that have limited their expansion.

Credit and financial access 🔗

Tree growing is a long-gestation activity. Unlike crops or dairy, trees take years – sometimes decades – to yield commercially viable returns. This makes institutional lenders wary. Credit flow to TGCS has historically been inadequate, and cooperatives often depend heavily on government grants or foreign assistance. The NTGCF received international support from agencies such as the Swedish and Canadian development agencies to fund its operations – a dependency that raises questions about long-term financial sustainability.

Legal and tenurial constraints 🔗

One of the more stubborn barriers is land tenure. Even where cooperative afforestation is legally encouraged, the procedural framework for leasing revenue wastelands to village cooperatives is not always clear or consistently applied across states. In some places, panchayat lands had to be administratively reclassified as revenue wastelands before the cooperative could legally use them – a process that adds layers of bureaucratic complexity. State forest acts, many of which predate the 1988 policy reforms, have also created friction between cooperative management and forest department jurisdiction.

Market access for tree products 🔗

Even after a plantation matures, cooperative members often struggle to get fair prices for timber and non-timber forest products. Market linkages are weak in many rural areas, and cooperatives lack the bargaining power or infrastructure to reach higher-value markets. Processing capacity is limited, which means most produce is sold as raw material at low prices.

Social factors 🔗

Building consensus within a village is not straightforward. Caste hierarchies, competing land-use interests, and initial suspicion of outside agencies have all posed challenges. Wastelands that were earmarked for cooperative plantation had often been informally used for grazing, fuel collection, and cultivation, with families earning a modest income from them. Convincing communities to give up short-term gains in exchange for long-term ecological and economic benefits required sustained effort and confidence-building – a process that cannot be rushed.

TGCS versus Joint Forest Management: a comparison 🔗

Both TGCS and Joint Forest Management (JFM) pursue community involvement in forestry, but they differ in important ways. JFM is a government-forest department programme where communities assist in managing state forests in exchange for a share of benefits. TGCS, by contrast, give communities direct ownership of the cooperative and full control over the land management process. There is no forest department intermediary – the community is the manager.

JFM has been criticised for being structurally top-down, with forest officials retaining authority over key decisions. In the TGCS model, the philosophy is one of decentralised governance – the cooperative earns autonomy as it matures. Critics have, however, noted that both models have drawn criticism for not sufficiently incorporating traditional ecological knowledge or adequately addressing the land and forest tenure rights of local communities.

Progress and the road ahead 🔗

The record of TGCS in India is one of genuine but uneven progress. In Gujarat and parts of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, TGCS have demonstrated that community-managed plantation is not just viable but often more cost-effective than state plantation programmes. Community-led plantation efforts have in several documented cases outperformed state forest department programmes in the same region, at significantly lower per-hectare costs.

The model’s strength lies in community ownership – when people have a direct stake in the survival of the trees they plant, survival rates improve, encroachment decreases, and the ecological recovery is faster and more durable. The challenge is to scale this model and address the structural bottlenecks around credit, legal clarity, and market access that have prevented wider replication.

India’s commitment to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 is a massive undertaking. Achieving it through centralised programmes alone is unlikely. Tree Growers’ Co-operative Societies represent a proven, people-centred alternative – one that aligns environmental restoration with rural livelihoods. Strengthening them through better credit access, simplified land-lease frameworks, and market linkage support could unlock their full potential at scale.

What do you think? If communities are demonstrably more effective than government agencies at managing local plantations, what would it take for India’s forest policy to genuinely devolve control – rather than just consult – at the grassroots level? And given that TGCS depend on long-gestation investments with delayed returns, how should cooperative credit policy be restructured to make tree growing as financially accessible as dairy farming?

References

1. https://www.teriin.org/article/reversing-land-degradation-india
2. https://www.iasparliament.com/current-affairs/forest-rights-and-forest-conservation
3. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/we-are-dealing-with-attitudes-25714
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296276937_Case_study_25_Tree_growers'_cooperatives_A_participatory_approach_to_reclaim_degraded_lands
5. https://www.nextias.com/blog/forest-policy-of-india/
6. https://www.fao.org/4/ae535e/ae535e06.htm
7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227682814_Tree_Plantations_for_Restoration_of_Degraded_Lands_and_Greening_of_Case_Study_of_Tree_Growers'_Cooperatives
8. https://mpforest.gov.in/img/files/Policy_NFP.pdf
9. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/environment/villagers-one-up-on-government-in-greening-project-29934