mobilize (hired) labor on a large scale. For the very poor, the quick cash argu-
ment may make them rely more on short-term wage labor and harvesting of
forest products, making it difficult to undertake medium- to long-term invest-
ments that agroforestry normally entails (see also Chapter 6, this volume).
Tr opical farmers normally engage in several types of production systems,
which makes analysis of the impact on deforestation more complex. These sys-
tems interact; they compete for family labor and produce food and cash
income to cover the family’s needs. Consider a simple case in which a farming
family operates one intensive system with lowland rice cultivation and one
extensive slash-and-burn system on the upland. A fixed amount of labor is to
be allocated between the two systems, and a new labor-intensive rice technol-
ogy is introduced (e.g., a new rice variety). This will clearly pull labor out of
the extensive system and reduce deforestation.
Consider next a labor-intensive agroforestry technology for the uplands with
the introduction of nitrogen-fixing legume trees or interplanting of the annual
food crops with tree crops. If we consider this system in isolation, the result will
be less deforestation because of the household’s labor constraints. But with two
systems, farmers can switch resources between them, and the result might be an
expansion of the labor-intensive agroforestry technology. The lesson is that labor
constraints for particular systems and deforestation activities often are flexible
because farmers can shift resources to the more profitable activities.
It is also critical to identify where the change occurs. Generally, technolo-
gies suitable for more intensive agriculture—normally located far from the
forest frontier—have better potential to reduce deforestation because of their
effects in both the labor market (absorb labor) and the output market (com-
pete with frontier crops). Agroforestry practices occur in both forest-abundant
and forest-scarce situations (see Table 5.1), but a significant share of agro-
forestry adoption falls under the first two cases in the table. Therefore, one
should be careful in stating that agroforestry is analogous to the green revolu-
tion as a deforestation-reducing strategy, as Sanchez et al. (1990) claim.
Whereas green revolution technologies are targeted at intensive agricultural
systems and therefore tend to pull resources away from forest-rich areas, agro-
forestry technologies often do not (Cattaneo 2001).
Agroforestry Technologies
The characteristics of new agroforestry technologies are important in assessing
their impact on deforestation, but such analysis is complex. The impact is
determined by the technology characteristics in combination with the farmer
and market characteristics. Generally, as we move away from the economic
textbooks’ “perfect markets”—the world where farmers have perfect informa-
tion and can sell or buy as much as they want at a fixed price—the technol-
ogy characteristics become more important.
96 II. The Ecological Economics of Agroforestry