ACIAR continues to work with Trees4Trees to explore about community forests especially community-based commercial forestry (CBCF) related farmers business networks in forestry.

Last year, it was MTG (Master Tree Grower) evaluation where farmers joined the MTG program in 2015 were evaluated to know if they really practice technical guides and theory to get maximum value. The MTG evaluation is to refine the MTG courses in the future.

On February 2017, next ACIAR program was Social Dimension Analysis Survey (SDA Survey), one of colecting data on this survey, trough Focus Group Discussion (FGD), a method to explore and collect complete information from community-based forests farmers. FGD is aimed to know specifically about farmers’ perception on the importance of forests in their forests business and problems that farmers often meet in maintaining their trees. This activity was held on 16-18 February 2017 in three villages in Pati District, Giling, Payak and Gunung Sari. There were 30 farmers gathered for FGD, total 90 farmers from 3 villages. To conduct this FGD in Pati,  ACIAR  appointed Trees4Trees team and Foerdia Team from Bogor.

Community-based commercial forestry (CBCF) in Pati is dominated by small-scale farmers with integrated agricultural and forestry enterprises, mainly supplying local and provincial markets. Sengon, which farmers mostly grow, has been in high demand over the past decades. They are fast-growing trees (maturing 5-6 years), more economically valued for farmers than teak.