Managed forest ecosystems-agroforestry systems in which crops such as coffee and bananas are planted side-by-side with woody perennials-are being touted as a means of safeguarding forests along with the ecological services they provide. Yet we know little about the determinants of land cover in such systems, information needed to design effective forest conservation policies. This paper presents a firstever spatial regression analysis of land cover in a managed forest ecosystem-a shade coffee region of coastal Mexico. Using high-resolution land cover data derived from aerial photographs, along with data on the institutional, geophysical, socioeconomic, and agronomic characteristics of the study area, we find that plots in close proximity to urban centers are less likely to be cleared, all other things equal. This finding contrasts sharply with the literature on natural forests. In addition, we find that membership in coffee marketing cooperatives, farm size, and certain soil types are associated with forest cover, while common property, proximity to small town centers, and the prevalence of indigenous peoples are associated with forest clearing.
Low and highly variable prices plague the coffee market, generating concerns that coffee farmers producing in shade systems under natural forests, as in biodiversity hotspot Oaxaca, Mexico, will abandon production and contribute to deforestation and reduced ecosystem services. Using stakeholder information, we build a setting-informed model to analyze farmers' decisions to abandon shade-grown coffee production and their reactions to policy to reduce abandonment. Exploring price premiums for bird-friendly certified coffee, payments for ecosystem services, and price floors as policies, we find that once a farmer is on the path toward abandonment, it is difficult to reverse. However, implementing policies early that are low cost to farmers – price floors and no-cost certification programs – can stem abandonment. Considering the abandonment that policy avoids per dollar spent, price floors are the most cost-effective policy, yet governments prefer certification programs that push costs onto international coffee consumers who pay the price premium.
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