Determinants of Agricultural Diversification in a Hotspot Area: Evidence from Colonist and Indigenous Communities in the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve, Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract

With data from a household survey covering migrant settlers and indigenous (Kichwa) communities in the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve (SBR), this study analyses the drivers of agricultural diversification/specialisation, focusing on the role of ethnicity and the livelihood strategies (LS) they follow. Data were collected using the Poverty and Environment Network methodology of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR-PEN). In order to establish the drivers of agricultural diversification, the number of crops and the Shannon index of crops areas were used as the dependent variables in ordinary least square (OLS) models, while a multinomial logit model (MLM) was used to assess a household's degree of diversification. The results of the OLS regression provides evidence supporting the notion that households, with Livestock-based and Wage-based livelihood strategies (LS) are less diversified and more specialized than households with Crop-based LS. Ethnicity has a positive and significant effect on agricultural diversification, with Kichwa farms more diversified than those of their migrant colonist counterparts. The results of the multinomial logit model (MLM) show that large Kichwa households, with Crop-based and Forest-based LS are more likely to adopt a highly diversified agricultural strategy. Based on these findings, we recommend a redirection of agricultural incentives, towards the adoption of diversified agricultural systems, as a strategy to promote more sustainable production systems in the Ecuadorian Amazon Region.

Determinant Factor of Plant Species Diversity in the Organic Agriculture-Dominated System of Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia

“…Based on their experience, participants of the focus group discussion underlined the reason that large farm holdings and several plots of land have given the advantage to wealthy farmers to diversify various plants in their farm. Our result is in line with [48][49][50] that higher plant species richness found in wealthy farmers was related to larger land holdings.…”

Identification and Assessment of Livestock Best Management Practices (BMPs) Using the REDD+ Approach in the Ecuadorian Amazon

“…We recommend improving grasslands using the BMPs, including planting trees, as well as using tree nucleation models and live fences to increase production and profits and reduce damage to the environment among households engaging in livestock-based livelihood strategies [18]. On this issue, the livelihood approach could be used to identify the acceptance of producers to convert less efficient or abandoned pasture areas into more sustainable production systems, as proposed by Torres and others [50] in the same study area. The benefits of BMPs were related to increased pasture resistance, a greater number of animal units per hectare, higher cattle weight, the presence of continuous pasture, decreased feeding costs, and soil erosion [33].…”

Exploring farmer perceptions of agroforestry via multi-objective optimisation: a test application in Eastern Panama

“…Assuming that farmers strive to reduce underperformance of the 10 pre-selected indicators, the optimal portfolios suggest that crop-based farms would benefit from allocating a larger share of their land to silvopasture, while for cattle-based farms diversifying their farm with more land-uses (including alley cropping) may be advantageous. Differences in the optimal portfolios of farms with similar land-use and income patterns are plausible, given the many empiric studies that link farm and household characteristics with farmers' land-use decisions, including the degree of agricultural diversification (Ochoa et al 2019;Torres et al 2018), and adoption of agroforestry (Pattanayak et al 2003;Zabala et al 2013).…”