Madagascar, a global biodiversity hotspot, is highly vulnerable to climate change and deforestation. Rising temperatures, erratic and reduced rainfall, and more frequent droughts and cyclones threaten agricultural production, undermining food security and rural incomes in a country where agriculture accounts for 25% of GDP and over 80% of employment. On the East Coast, the expansion of cash crops—particularly clove (Syzygium aromaticum), vanilla, and lychee—has significantly shaped farming systems. Five types of clove-based systems are distinguished, from monospecific plantations to parklands and agroforestry systems (SAF) with high structural and floristic diversity. These systems dominate the tanety (upland hills), while horaka, the irrigated rice fields, are dedicated to rice monoculture. Yet, the distribution of these systems remains poorly documented. In a context of fragmented smallholder farming, we hypothesize that farmers' technical choices are influenced by land access (total area, horaka proportion, spatial dispersion) and reflect their life cycle stage (e.g., young inheritors vs. older landholders transferring land). This study, conducted in a village of the Analanjirofo region, explores the links between household socio-economic profiles and clove-based systems. Twenty-six farms were surveyed through semi-structured interviews and exhaustive field mapping. For each field, we recorded its location (IN/OUT of the village), topography (tanety or horaka), area of the “IN-tanety” fields, land use, and structural features. Clove-based systems were classified into five types according to Michel et al. (2021), including diversified configurations where the lower stratum was either entrusted to another household or cultivated under an existing canopy. “CF” referred to cases where a farm cultivated the upper tree layer (clove, fruit, forest species) and ceded the lower one (vanilla or food crops) to another household; the reciprocal arrangement was coded “EMP”. G