Impacts of Government Policies and Farmer Preferences on Agroforestry Adoption in Southeastern Mexico.
Investigators:
Evan Mercer,
Southern Research Station
Ann Snook, International Center for Research in Agroforestry, Mexico
James F. Casey, North Carolina State University
Loren Ford, USFS, Huron-Manistee National Forest
Description:
Conventional wisdom suggests that agroforestry projects are capable of providing substantial economic and ecological benefits to target communities and households and, therefore, should be readily adopted by farmers. Nevertheless, many attempts to promote agroforestry systems throughout the world have resulted in inadequate rates of adoption. A variety of reasons contribute to these failures. This research focusses on two related causes: 1. government policies that influence land-use decisions and, 2. inadequate socio-economic assessments of farmer preferences, priorities, and constraints in the design of the agroforestry systems. The project objectives are:
- to analyze the impacts of current government policies on the natural resource base, with emphasis on conflicts between policies that aim to conserve forest cover and other natural resources and policies that encourage exploitation of natural resources and conversion of forest to other land uses.
- to examine the effect of natural resource policies on agroforestry adoption, including land tenure, government incentives and USAID-NGO projects and emphasizing the ability of policies to offset short-term opportunity costs so that long-term benefits of sustainable natural resource management practices may be realized.
- to develop an improved methodology (conjoint analysis) for socio-economic evaluation of the adoptability of agroforestry systems and implement the methodology in Southeastern Mexico to assist ICRAF Mexico in designing socio-economically appropriate agroforestry systems for Southeastern Mexico,
Problem Area(s):
Tropical forestry
Status:
Ongoing
|
modified:
13-MAR-2000
|
|
USDA FS SRS
|