Evaluating the long‐term impacts of promoting “green” agriculture in the Amazon

Abstract

Frontier development in the Brazilian Amazon has created vast areas of largely deforested landscapes. Conservation efforts in these post-frontier zones seek to protect the remaining forest fragments and promote sustainable agricultural practices that absorb labor, meet market demand, and generate ecosystem services. Assessments of these efforts often find that rates of sustained uptake are disappointingly low and that impacts are difficult to discern, but this could be due to the short-time frames of both the efforts themselves and their evaluation. We investigate the impacts of participation in an internationally sponsored farmer association that for 15 years promoted sustainable agricultural practices in the heavily deforested state of Rondônia, Brazil. Using data from a georeferenced four-period panel survey of farmers in combination with remote sensing data on land use spanning the life of the association, we apply matching methods to estimate the impacts of participation. We find that membership resulted in more diversified production systems, including more land allocated to agroforestry. Members also deforested less of their farms, but this difference is not statistically significant after we control for selection bias in membership.JEL classifications: Q1, Q12, Q23

The impacts of agroforestry interventions on agricultural productivity, ecosystem services, and human well‐being in low‐ and middle‐income countries: A systematic review

“…Sills and Caviglia‐Harris (2015) measured the difference in percent of the farmer's lot that was deforested between the “green” agriculture program participants and nonparticipants. They found that the program decreased forest cover loss, but the results were not statistically significant and may have been due to positive selection bias.…”

“…Another study, Sills and Caviglia‐Harris (2015), also evaluated the impacts of a program promoting “green” agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon in the short‐ and long‐terms. We did not include the results from this study in this meta‐analysis since they did not observe the impacts of the agroforestry component directly, but rather the impacts of the program on agroforestry adoption and the overall impacts of the program, which included a broad range of green agricultural practices.…”

“…That there were so few rigorous studies on this topic is surprising given that agroforestry is often promoted for diversifying food production and thereby improving nutrition and food security outcomes. Sills and Caviglia-Harris (2015) measured the difference in percent of the farmer's lot that was deforested between the "green" agriculture program participants and nonparticipants. They found that the program decreased forest cover loss, but the results were not statistically significant and may have been due to positive selection bias.…”

“…Under this scenario, when agroforestry interventions are introduced and individuals adopt agroforestry practices, the practices lead to improved yields and income generation as well as ecosystem service generation.Under this pathway, three key elements, participant engagement, program exposure, and indirect financial support, lead to agroforestry adoption, which is then intended to lead to positive productivity, profitability, and human well-being outcomes through diversified production and income streams, improved soil fertility, and other changes. The promoted practices are simultaneously supposed to lead to improved ecosystem services outcomes, such as soil and water management, soil fertility replenishment, habitat provision, and carbon sequestration.,,,Thorlakson and Neufeldt (2012),Dai et al (2017),Sills and Caviglia-Harris (2015), and examined interventions along this pathway. The studied interventions tended to lead to increased food security through improved yields or dietary diversity.…”

Perspectives for multifunctional landscapes in the Amazon : Analyzing farmers’ strategies, perceptions, and scenarios in an agricultural frontier

“…Access to broader social networks can be an opportunity to introduce diversification. For instance, membership to local associations and farmer groups can facilitate widespread adoption of novel practices and novel farming systems, such as agroforestry (Godtland et al, 2004;Sills and Caviglia-Harris, 2015). This phenomenon has been documented in the Cerrado region where the development of the agribusiness sector in the last 20 years has been shaped by spatially concentrated social networks (de Sowa and Busch, 1998).…”