TROPICAL DEFORESTATION AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA

Douglas Southgate

No 271204, 1991 Annual Meeting, August 4-7, Manhattan, Kansas from American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association)

Abstract: If agricultural frontisr expansion were caused exclusively by increasing demands for agricultural commodities, the prospects for containing frontier expansion in Latin America would be very bleak indeed. Throughout the region, populations are overwhelmingly young. With numbers of women capable of bearing children expected to rise far many more years, continued population growth is inevitable, even with the decline in fertility rates currently taking place in nearly -every part of the Western Hemisphere. As the number of people demanding ta be fed increases, pressure on natural resource inputs to agrfc-ultural production will mount. This paper's regression analysis of the causes of agriculture's geographi~ expansion in twenty_-three Latin American countries yields insights on how this pressure can be accomodated. Specifically, growth in crop and livestock yields, which is associated with investment in non-land assets in the agricultural sector, is shown to alleviate the pressure for frontier expansion associated with enhanced demand for food. This finding suggests that there are important complementarities between agricultural development and conservation of tropical forests and other natural environments in Latin America.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Community/Rural/Urban Development; Environmental Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 1991-08-04
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea91:271204

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.271204

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