Economist sheds light on forces at work in slash-and-burn agriculture
At the fringes of the Brazilian Amazon rain forest, an ecosystem rich in biodiversity overlaps a world of human poverty.
Economist Stephen Vosti has stood in breathtaking awe in the midst of that jungle, then walked a few yards away and witnessed the shocking living conditions of a farmer whose children are hungry.
“You realize that some ecosystem services may have to be sacrificed because people need to be fed right away,” Vosti says.
An assistant adjunct professor in the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Vosti is an expert on some of the tradeoffs that can occur in places where poverty, agriculture and the rain forest collide.
He is helping to develop public policy that supports a middle ground of sustainable development. The idea is to reduce the conflict between conservationists who decry the loss of habitat and the small-scale farmers who eke out a living at the edge of the wilderness by slashing and burning the jungle around them to grow crops and raise cattle.
Reducing pressures on forest margins
Vosti's work in Brazil is part of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program, a global collaboration of more than 80 institutions that conducts research in 12 tropical sites worldwide. The program has a goal to enhance agricultural and forest productivity and reduce pressures to develop at the margins of moist tropical forests.
As co-editor of the book Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: The Search for Alternatives (2005), Vosti helped pull together the first decade of the program’s research, including his work leading the research effort in Brazil.
While working in the Amazon, Vosti drew on his background in economics to examine the tradeoffs between three elements of a “critical triangle” faced by developing countries: the desire to decrease poverty, increase economic growth and increase environmental sustainability.
The Amazon Basin, which covers 52 percent of Brazil’s national area, loses about 5 million acres of rain forest a year in the give-and-take between these three points of the triangle.
In many areas, large-scale agriculture projects clear wide areas of forest with heavy machinery like Caterpillar tractors; however, the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program focused on small farms because of their inherent link to poverty.
‘You have to write these farmers a check if you insist, for example, that they leave half of their land in forest; our work helps determine the size of that check.’
UC Davis economist Stephen Vosti
Many don't understand reasons
Although people around the world object to the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture in the Amazon, Vosti believes that many do not fully understand the reasons why small-scale farmers participate in it.
“They are poor,” he says of the farmers. “Their kids don’t go to school, they’re not very healthy, and they don’t have much of anything.”
What they do have is their forested land, a source of natural capital that they strive to transform into other forms of capital via agriculture. By clearing and burning the jungle to produce their crops and cattle, these farmers improve their families’ chances for a better life.
Vosti and his colleagues with the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program wondered if farmers could make a better livelihood in an environmentally sustainable way, and how public policy could help manage the tradeoffs.
To find out, they developed bioeconomic models, which measure the costs and benefits of alternative uses of forested and cleared lands, and predict possible effects of different public policies on the forest and people living there.
Yanking the policy levers
“Models help us respond to questions like, ‘What would forest margins look like if you yanked on one policy lever versus the other?’” Vosti says.
Cranking through the appropriate numbers reveals that some win-win solutions exist in the form of more productive farming and forest-management technologies, such as improved seeds and better pasture management.
However, these solutions require an initial investment that impoverished farmers often cannot afford, preferring instead the short-term returns offered by unsustainable slash-and-burn farming practices.
“There is an opportunity cost associated with protecting anything,” Vosti says of the rain forest.
Vosti’s work with the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program helped dispel the belief that natural resources were being squandered in the Amazon with no direct benefit to people.
Profitable endeavors lead to more demand
Despite the poor soil quality and large amounts of labor required to clear the forest, agriculture and cattle ranching can be quite profitable for farmers, ultimately increasing their demand to clear even more land.
“You have to write these farmers a check if you insist, for example, that they leave half of their land in forest; our work helps determine the size of that check.”
In showing the international community the size of the price tag that comes with stopping development in the Amazon, the program’s work helped shift the polarized debate of conservation vs. agriculture to a middle ground of sustainable development.
“The backbone of any discussion today is where, when and how to develop the Amazon, not ‘Should we?’” Vosti says.
The success of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Program was recognized in December 2005, when the group received the Science Award for Outstanding Partnership from the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research.
Most such research efforts fail
“Most broad-based, interdisciplinary research efforts like this fail,” Vosti says. “It requires new thinking and it requires giving ground. We all had tremendous dedication to our core objectives – to identify and measure the tradeoffs associated with converting forested land to agriculture.”
On the home page: The slash-and-burn research team pauses to watch a burn in progress in the rain forest. (Stephen Vosti/UC Davis photo)
Part of Vosti’s dedication comes from witnessing first hand the struggles of farming families in abject poverty first hand, especially ones with children. When stepping out of a plane or a jeep in the developing world, the plight of the children is often the first thing he sees.
“Hundreds of millions go to bed hungry every night, with very little hope for anything different,” he says.
But investments in agriculture, forests, health, and education can change that. “You can change their lives, both the day after tomorrow, and for years to come. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning, still.”