IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/nlsseb/2017_002.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can conservation agriculture save tropical forests? The case of minimum tillage in Zambia

Author

Listed:
  • Ngoma, Hambulo

    (School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

  • Angelsen, Arild

    (School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

Abstract

Minimum tillage (MT) is a key component in the promotion of conservation agriculture (CA). This paper asks whether MT reduces cropland expansion and thus deforestation. We develop a simple theoretical household model of land expansion, and test hypotheses by estimating a double hurdle model using household survey data from 368 smallholders in rural Zambia. We find that about 19% of the farmers expanded cropland into forests, clearing an average of 0.14 ha over one year. Overall, MT adoption does not significantly reduce deforestation among households in our sample, while labor availability stimulate expansion. Yield augmenting agricultural technologies (such as MT) may not reduce expansion unless combined with other forest conservation measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Ngoma, Hambulo & Angelsen, Arild, 2017. "Can conservation agriculture save tropical forests? The case of minimum tillage in Zambia," Working Paper Series 02-2017, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, School of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nlsseb:2017_002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nmbu.no/download/file/fid/25148
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frank Place & Keijiro Otsuka, 2000. "Population Pressure, Land Tenure, and Tree Resource Management in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 76(2), pages 233-251.
    2. J. C. Burgess, 1998. "The economics of tropical forest land use options," Chapters, in: The Economics of Environment and Development, chapter 11, pages 223-253, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Haggblade, Steven & Tembo, Gelson, 2003. "Development, Diffusion and Impact of Conservation Farming in Zambia," Food Security Collaborative Working Papers 54464, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    4. Miet Maertens & Manfred Zeller & Regina Birner, 2006. "Sustainable agricultural intensification in forest frontier areas," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 34(2), pages 197-206, March.
    5. Simeon K. Ehui & Thomas W. Hertel, 1989. "Deforestation and Agricultural Productivity in the Côte d'Ivoire," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 71(3), pages 703-711.
    6. Tachibana, Towa & Nguyen, Trung M. & Otsuka, Keijiro, 2001. "Agricultural Intensification versus Extensification: A Case Study of Deforestation in the Northern-Hill Region of Vietnam," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 44-69, January.
    7. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing, 2006. "Tenure security and land-related investment: Evidence from Ethiopia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1245-1277, July.
    8. Cragg, John G, 1971. "Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 39(5), pages 829-844, September.
    9. Janvry, Alain De & Sadoulet, Elisabeth, 2010. "Agriculture for development in sub-Saharan Africa: An update," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 1-11, September.
    10. E. B. Barbier & J. C. Burgess, 2001. "The Economics of Tropical Deforestation," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(3), pages 413-433, July.
    11. Jennifer M. Alix-Garcia & Elizabeth N. Shapiro & Katharine R. E. Sims, 2012. "Forest Conservation and Slippage: Evidence from Mexico’s National Payments for Ecosystem Services Program," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 88(4), pages 613-638.
    12. Smith, Robert E., 2004. "Land Tenure, Fixed Investment, and Farm Productivity: Evidence from Zambia's Southern Province," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1641-1661, October.
    13. Babigumira, Ronnie & Angelsen, Arild & Buis, Maarten & Bauch, Simone & Sunderland, Terry & Wunder, Sven, 2014. "Forest Clearing in Rural Livelihoods: Household-Level Global-Comparative Evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 64(S1), pages 67-79.
    14. Chamberlin, Jordan & Jayne, T.S. & Headey, D., 2014. "Scarcity amidst abundance? Reassessing the potential for cropland expansion in Africa," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 51-65.
    15. Otsuka, Keijiro, 2000. "Population Pressure, Land Tenure and Natural Resource Management," 2000 Conference, August 13-18, 2000, Berlin, Germany 197209, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Kabubo-Mariara, Jane, 2007. "Land conservation and tenure security in Kenya: Boserup's hypothesis revisited," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 25-35, October.
    17. Hanan G. Jacoby, 1993. "Shadow Wages and Peasant Family Labour Supply: An Econometric Application to the Peruvian Sierra," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 903-921.
    18. Place, Frank, 2009. "Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the Economics Literature and Recent Policy Strategies and Reforms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1326-1336, August.
    19. Angelsen, Arild, 1999. "Agricultural expansion and deforestation: modelling the impact of population, market forces and property rights," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 185-218, February.
    20. John Herbert Ainembabazi & Arild Angelsen, 2016. "Land Inheritance and Market Transactions in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 92(1), pages 28-56.
    21. repec:bla:jecsur:v:15:y:2001:i:3:p:413-33 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Stephane Hallegatte & Mook Bangalore & Laura Bonzanigo & Marianne Fay & Tamaro Kane & Ulf Narloch & Julie Rozenberg & David Treguer & Adrien Vogt-Schilb, 2016. "Shock Waves," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 22787.
    23. Mulenga, Brian P. & Nkonde, Chewe & Ngoma, Hambulo, 2015. "Does Customary Land Tenure System Encourage Local Forestry Management in Zambia? A Focus on Wood Fuel," Food Security Collaborative Policy Briefs 210858, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    24. David S. Powlson & Clare M. Stirling & M. L. Jat & Bruno G. Gerard & Cheryl A. Palm & Pedro A. Sanchez & Kenneth G. Cassman, 2014. "Limited potential of no-till agriculture for climate change mitigation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(8), pages 678-683, August.
    25. William J. Burke, 2009. "Fitting and interpreting Cragg's tobit alternative using Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(4), pages 584-592, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Priscilla Wainaina & Peter A. Minang & Lalisa Duguma & Kennedy Muthee, 2021. "A Review of the Trade-Offs across Different Cocoa Production Systems in Ghana," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-18, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ngoma, Hambulo & Angelsen, Arild, 2018. "Can conservation agriculture save tropical forests? The case of minimum tillage in Zambia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 153-162.
    2. Abman, Ryan & Carney, Conor, 2020. "Land rights, agricultural productivity, and deforestation," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    3. Conor Carney & Ryan Abman, 2018. "Land rights, agricultural productivity, and deforestation in Vietnam," WIDER Working Paper Series 88, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Ngoma, Hambulo & Pelletier, Johanne & Mulenga, Brian P. & Subakanya, Mitelo, 2021. "Climate-smart agriculture, cropland expansion and deforestation in Zambia: Linkages, processes and drivers," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    5. Yoshito Takasaki & Oliver T. Coomes & Christian Abizaid & Stéphanie Brisson, 2014. "An Efficient Nonmarket Institution under Imperfect Markets: Labor Sharing for Tropical Forest Clearing," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 96(3), pages 711-732.
    6. Keijiro Otsuka & Frank Place, 2014. "Changes in Land Tenure and Agricultural Intensification in Sub-Saharan Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-051, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Yoshito Takasaki, 2011. "Economic models of shifting cultivation: a review," Tsukuba Economics Working Papers 2011-006, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba.
    8. Galinato, Gregmar I. & Galinato, Suzette P., 2013. "The short-run and long-run effects of corruption control and political stability on forest cover," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 153-161.
    9. Ayalew, Hailemariam & Admasu, Yeshwas & Chamberlin, Jordan, 2021. "Is land certification pro-poor? Evidence from Ethiopia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    10. Cao, Yueming & Bai, Yunli & Zhang, Linxiu, 2020. "The impact of farmland property rights security on the farmland investment in rural China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    11. Marchand, Sébastien, 2016. "The colonial origins of deforestation: an institutional analysis," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(3), pages 318-349, June.
    12. Alain Desdoigts & Hugues Kouassi Kouadio, 2013. "Deforestation, Migration, Land Appropriation and Reforms: Rural resilience against the backdrop of the Malthusian crisis in Ivory Coast," Erudite Working Paper 2013-01, Erudite.
    13. Ryan Abman & Conor Carney, 2018. "Land rights, agricultural productivity, and deforestation in Vietnam," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-88, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Kotchikpa Gabriel Lawin & Lota Tamini, 2018. "Droits de propriété foncière et performance des petits producteurs agricoles des pays en développement : une synthèse de la littérature empirique," CIRANO Working Papers 2018s-05, CIRANO.
    15. Nin-Pratt, Alejandro, 2015. "Agricultural intensification in Africa: A regional analysis:," IFPRI discussion papers 1433, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    16. Eskander, Shaikh M.S.U. & Barbier, Edward B., 2017. "Tenure Security, Human Capital and Soil Conservation in an Overlapping Generation Rural Economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 176-185.
    17. Bhattacharya, Haimanti & Innes, Robert, 2005. "Bi-Directional Links Between Population Growth and the Environment: Evidence From India," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19404, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    18. Uwacu Alban Singirankabo & Maurits Willem Ertsen, 2020. "Relations between Land Tenure Security and Agricultural Productivity: Exploring the Effect of Land Registration," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-18, May.
    19. KOUADIO, Hugues & DESDOIGTS, Alain, 2012. "Déforestation, migrations, saturation et réformes foncières: La Côte d’Ivoire entre résilience rurale et litiges fonciers [Deforestation, migration, saturation and land reforms: Côte d'Ivoire betwe," MPRA Paper 49938, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Addiswork Tilahun Teklemariam & Logan Cochrane, 2021. "The Rush to the Peripheries: Land Rights and Tenure Security in Peri-Urban Ethiopia," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-20, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cropland expansion; deforestation; minimum tillage; double hurdle; Zambia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • Q12 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
    • Q23 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Forestry

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:nlsseb:2017_002. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Frode Alfnes (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ioumbno.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.