Most countries in Central America and the Caribbean depend heavily on agriculture; efforts to sustain and improve the sector's productivity are therefore crucial to the region's economic development and to the welfare of its people. Land degradation is thought to pose a severe threat to the sustainability of agricultural production. Yet despite long-standing concern about this threat and dramatic claims of environmental damage, surprisingly little empirical analysis has been done on the causes and severity of land degradation problems in the region and on how best to tackle them. Meanwhile, many of the conservation programs designed to address the problems have fallen short of expectations. Often farmers have not adopted the recommended conservation practices or have abandoned them once the project ended. The research presented in this article attempts to bridge the empirical gap, using cost-benefit analysis to investigate the nature and severity of the soil degradation problem and to assess the cost-effectiveness of proposed solutions. Because soil degradation problems tend to be site-specific, the analysis is rooted in case studies, and because conservation programs stand or fall on the participation of farmers, the study's main focus is on the profitability of the measures and the deterrents to their adoption from the farmers' point of view. Soil degradation can be defined as a reduction in the land's actual or potential uses (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987). Many cultivation practices tend to degrade soil over time. For example, cultivation can expose soil to water and wind erosion, repeated tillage can weaken soil structure, crop production can remove nutrients, and use of machinery can compact the soil. Central America's mountains and heavy rainfall make much of the region particularly

Deforestation, growing scarcity of tree products, and environmental degradation have created serious problems for rural land use in many developing countries. Agroforestry, a system in which/ woody perennials are grown on the same land as agricultural crops or livestock, has been increasingly enlisted in the campaign to meet these threats to the rural economy. Case studies of twenty-one agroforestry projects in six Central American and two Caribbean countries formed the empirical basis for the study described in this article. A focal point of analysis was the profitability of agroforestry for farmers as a crucial incentive to adoption. The findings indicate that many agroforestry practices are profitable under a broad range of conditions and are therefore likely to be widely applicable. Successful projects have worked with local communities, responding to local needs and preferences and offering farmers a broad basket of species and systenms from which to choose. Demonstration plots and the use of paratechnicians have been low-cost and effective means of technology transfer, and applied research has been imiportant in identifying techniques and practices suited to the region. Other findings have identified government regulation of tree harvesting and insecurity of tenure-though not lack of title in itself-as disincentives to adoption.

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