Reforestation programs are a common policy response among developing country governments in the tropics attempting to deal with environmental and economic problems caused by widespread deforestation. The objective of this paper is to examine participation by smalland medium-sized farms in two reforestation programs undertaken in recent years by one country, Costa Rica, which has been at the forefront of developing country environmental protection efforts. Analysis of a survey of 243 program participants and non-participants shows that farm households participating in reforestation programs had generally larger farm sizes, were dedicated to low labor-intensive, land-extensive agricultural activities, faced significant family onfarm labor constraints, were more heavily dependent on off-farm income sources, and had more extensive contact with local extension efforts. Logistic regression is employed to econometrically identify demographic, economic, and land use determinants of farm household participation in reforestation programs; the implications of these findings are analyzed. The limitations of reforestation programs, especially with regard to management factors and quality of reforested plots, are reviewed. Implications for improving the efficiency of reforestation programs and the merits of other policy alternatives are also discussed.
The transaction cost approach is used to explain why small non-industrial private forest (NIPF) ownerships are increasing in the U.S. We argue that the number of small NIPF owners have increased because: 1) a significant amount of forestland is no longer used economically if primarily for timber production, but rather for non-timber forest products and environmental services (particularly where population density is high), 2) when a person makes frequent use of non-timber products and services, owning forestland is more efficient for them because it saves the transaction costs involved in getting them from the market, 3) forestland parcelization takes place when non-timber value increases faster than timber value, and 4) marginal value for non-timber product is diminishing much faster than that for timber production. The paper also discusses implications of the parcelization of NIPF ownerships on forest management.
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