Are less polluting and synergistic farming technologies complementary?

Jean-Marc Blazy, M’hand Fares and Alban Thomas ()
Additional contact information
M’hand Fares: UMR SELMET - Systèmes d'élevage méditerranéens et tropicaux - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro Montpellier - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
Alban Thomas: GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The objective of our paper is to provide an explanation for the lack of joint adoption by farmers of cleaner technologies in banana production, specifically fallow period (FP) and disease-free seedlings (DFS). Our hypothesis is that while these technologies are synergistic from an agronomic and environmental perspective, and thus efficient from a social interest perspective, they are substitutable rather than complementary from a farmer's private interest perspective. In other words, farmers receive lower returns from adopting both technologies together than from adopting them in isolation. To test this hypothesis, we present a unified empirical framework for assessing complementarity. We estimate a structural model of complementarity that overcomes the unobservable heterogeneity bias found in previous models using a database of 607 banana farmers in the French West Indies. Our results support our hypothesis, showing a substitution effect between FP and DFS rather than a complementarity effect. Moreover, we observe a contrasting profile of adopting farmers: smallholders who are reluctant to change adopt FP, while more specialized farmers who anticipate a pesticide ban adopt DFS. A public policy that promotes joint adoption should compensate smallholders for the cost of the DFS technology, while compensating more productive farmers for leaving their land fallow.

Keywords: Agroecology; clean technologies; complementarity; joint adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03-19
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05008165v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, 2025, pp.1 - 18. ⟨10.1017/age.2025.9⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05008165v1/document (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:hal:journl:hal-05008165

DOI: 10.1017/age.2025.9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().