Speaker
Description
The relationship of agriculture to climate change is bi-directional. On the one hand, climate change is a major challenge for agriculture and food systems, as it causes crop failures due to extreme weather events and increased atmospheric temperatures. On the other hand, current agricultural production itself contributes significantly to climate change. Around 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the food and agricultural sector. This results in the need to reduce emissions in our food system. At the same time, the challenge is to make agriculture more resilient to the effects of climate change. Sustainable agricultural practices (SAP) play a key role here and our study focuses on these. SAP have the potential to improve biodiversity and soil quality with regard to conventional practices – while maintaining yields (Manda et al., 2016).
Several studies analyze the socioeconomic and agronomic determinants of the adoption of sustainable practices among smallholder farmers (Oyetunde-Usman et al., 2021). Still, there is only little information on the same adoption dynamics among smallholder farmers who are highly specialized in one single cash crop. Likewise, the research on determinants of the adoption of SAP in oil palm farming is relatively recent. Existing studies rather focus on the determinants of the adoption of RSPO or ISPO certifications (e.g., Rodthong et al., 2020). Therefore, we investigate whether crop history in oil palm production affects today’s adoption of SAP.
In Costa Rica, the United Fruit Company (UFC) introduced large-scale monocultural systems of banana plantations during the early 20th century. After the company left in the mid-1980s, many of the former banana plantations were converted into oil palm. Today, oil palm is the second largest agricultural sector in terms of plantation area, behind coffee, and ranks third after bananas and pineapples regarding production volume. In the Costa Rican oil palm sector, farmer cooperatives which had already emerged at the time of the UFC still play an important role today.
First, we explore the adoption of sustainable agriculture practices through (1) the use of organic instead of conventional fertilizers, (2) manual weeding instead of herbicide use and (3) intercropping and biodiversity enrichment. Subsequently, we analyze the relationship between crop history on today’s adoption of SAP. To test this relationship, we employ a mediation analysis and use cooperative membership as a mediator between crop history and today’s adoption of SAP.
We add to the existing literature on socioeconomic and institutional determinants of the adoption of sustainable practices among small- and medium-scale farmers in tropical agriculture. We hypothesize (i) that the adoption of SAP in Costa Rica is mostly influenced by institutional factors such as contracts or cooperative memberships and less by socioeconomic factors and (ii) that these institutional factors can be linked back to the farmers’ crop history.
To address the aforementioned research question, we conducted 515 household interviews with Costa Rican small-scale oil palm farmers in the Puntarenas province – the main oil palm-producing region of the country – between December 2022 and January 2023. The collected dataset is representative of the Costa Rican oil palm sector and contains rich information on household livelihoods, farming inputs and outputs, environmental perception through farmers and land-use history on plot level. We employ probit regressions on the SAP adoption variables. For a more detailed analysis, we intend to use early satellite images from the 1980s to examine which subregion in our study area was heavily influenced by agricultural practices linked to the former banana company.
We find that younger age, high spending on machinery and long distance to markets are important determinants of organic fertilizer adoption among farmers. Meanwhile, household income is not associated with a higher likelihood of adopting organic fertilizer, unlike in many similar studies. The farms that grew bananas before palm oil are less likely to use organic fertilizers today. Extension services have a significant influence on the adoption of manual weeding but not on organic fertilizers. Further, findings suggest that intercropping is mostly adopted by relatively larger and wealthier farms. We hypothesize that one mechanism between crop history and adoption of SAP is the intensive usage of agrochemicals over decades which makes farmers more trained and conscious about their use in today’s farming.
Given that oil palm production systems are relatively similar around the globe, our findings are also of relevance for policymakers in oil palm producing countries other than Costa Rica. They may also be relevant for other perennial crop productions and agroforestry schemes because adoption dynamics of SAPs such as organic fertilizers are similar across different crops and regions (Darras et al., 2019). The findings of this study help policymakers to better understand heterogeneity across smallholder farmers – and the long-term consequences of the organizational structure of a multinational company. The findings can also help to improve policy on training for SAP adoption, e.g., through group workshops with farmers which are common practice in Costa Rica.
References
Darras, K. F. A., Corre, M. D., Formaglio, G., Tjoa, A., Potapov, A., Brambach, F., Sibhatu, K. T., Grass, I., Rubiano, A. A., Buchori, D., Drescher, J., Fardiansah, R., Hölscher, D., Irawan, B., Kneib, T., Krashevska, V., Krause, A., Kreft, H., Li, K., … Veldkamp, E. (2019). Reducing Fertilizer and Avoiding Herbicides in Oil Palm Plantations—Ecological and Economic Valuations. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 2(November). https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00065
Manda, J., Alene, A. D., Gardebroek, C., Kassie, M., & Tembo, G. (2016). Adoption and Impacts of Sustainable Agricultural Practices on Maize Yields and Incomes: Evidence from Rural Zambia. Journal of Agricultural Economics, 67(1), 130–153. https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12127
Oyetunde-Usman, Z., Olagunju, K. O., & Ogunpaimo, O. R. (2021). Determinants of adoption of multiple sustainable agricultural practices among smallholder farmers in Nigeria. International Soil and Water Conservation Research, 9(2), 241–248. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2020.10.007
Rodthong, W., Kuwornu, J. K. M., Datta, A., Anal, A. K., & Tsusaka, T. W. (2020). Factors Influencing the Intensity of Adoption of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Practices by Smallholder Farmers in Thailand. Environmental Management, 66(3), 377–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-020-01323-3
