As this paper showed, market incentives, without subsidies, can be sufficient to result in widespread tree growing by small-scale farmers. After a long history of deforestation and conflict over forest resources in the Dominican Republic, interest in tree-growing soared in the 1980s and 1990s, following a series of NGO interventions such as the ENDA-Caribe Zambrana-Chacuey project described in this paper. Farmers were given maximum choice from a range of technologies and species, and were presented with 'social incentives', for example on-farm experiments by respected neighbours. Following the initial impetus of the project, farmers discovered that returns to labour were greater for tree crops than alternatives, which made tree-growing especially attractive to the rising number of absentee landholders.