The impact of seed market access and transaction costs on potato biodiversity and yields in Bolivia

Abstract

Using data from Bolivia, this paper analyzes seed market participation and how transaction costs in these markets influence intracrop biodiversity and the influence of biodiversity on yields. Results indicate that seed market attributes such as distance and market-level biodiversity have a crucial effect on a farmer's market choice, suggesting that farmers are willing to sacrifice time and income to travel further distances in order to reach markets with a broader range of varieties. This study finds that farmers from this sample who have access to seed markets are more likely to have higher levels of intracrop biodiversity. In addition, for market-integrated farmers, intracrop biodiversity does not seem to have a negative effect on yields, which suggests that improved market access does not threaten biodiversity in contexts with similar characteristics to the study site.

Public Expenditures, Impact Evaluations and Agricultural Productivity: Summary of the Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean

“…The objective of these subsidies was to raise the income of small-scale rural farmers who were not going to be able to compete in the global markets against low-priced imports from relatively productive countries with agricultural sectors that had suitable infrastructure, robust credit markets, extension services, subsidized production and adequate investments in R&D (Pérez, Schlesinger and Wise, 2008). suggests that decoupled payments could influence production decisions 45 , yet only a limited number of evaluations on PROCAMPO's impact have been conducted, and they have generally measured economic welfare, not outcomes associated with agricultural productivity. As pointed out in Salazar, Winters and Maffioli (2010), it is infeasible to carry out an evaluation of the overall effects of the program since it was implemented over two decades ago; therefore, only particular periods or "added impact" can be analyzed.…”