Debt Peonage and Over-Deforestation in the Amazon Frontier of Brazil

Anna Luiza Ozorio de Almeida

No 197891, 1992 Occasional Paper Series No. 6 from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: This paper proposes that under the conditions typical of the Amazon frontier of Brazilabsence of a wage labour market and abundant supply of land-farm-family labour is a positive function of debt. This labour supply response, known as "debt peonage," provides for indirect management of farm labour by local merchants via the crop lien mechanism. A microeconomic model of the family farm shows that debt-labour leads to labour-intensive farming but land-extensive farming leads to over-deforestation. Correct colonization policy should then provide for market structures that reduce indebtedness and deforestation. This would also reduce the environmental consequences of settlement in the Amazon.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 6
Date: 1992
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/197891/files/a ... pers-1992-041_1_.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaaeo6:197891

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.197891

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 1992 Occasional Paper Series No. 6 from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().