Land-use change, nutrition, and gender roles in Indonesian farm households

Daniel Chrisendo, Vijesh Krishna, Hermanto Siregar and Matin Qaim

No 24, EFForTS Discussion Paper Series from University of Goettingen, Collaborative Research Centre 990 "EFForTS, Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)"

Abstract: Many tropical countries are experiencing massive land-use change with profound environmental and socioeconomic implications. In Indonesia, oil palm cultivation is rapidly expanding at the expense of more traditional agricultural crops and forest land. While environmental effects of the oil palm boom were analyzed in many studies, much less is known about social effects. Here, we analyze how oil palm cultivation by smallholder farmers influences nutrition through changing income, gender roles, and other possible mechanisms. The analysis uses panel data collected in Jambi Province, Sumatra, one of the hotspots of Indonesia's recent oil palm boom. Regression models show that oil palm cultivation has positive effects on different indicators of nutrition and dietary quality. These effects are primarily channeled through income gains that improve smallholders' access to nutritious foods from the market. Oil palm requires less family labor than traditional crops, so a switch to oil palm could potentially free labor for off-farm economic activities. We find that oil palm cultivation is positively associated with off-farm employment of male but not female household members, which may be related to unequal opportunities. Independent of oil palm cultivation, female off-farm employment has positive nutrition effects, even after controlling for total household income.

Keywords: oil palm; smallholder livelihoods; gender roles; female empowerment; nutrition; dietary quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-sea
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Related works:
Journal Article: Land-use change, nutrition, and gender roles in Indonesian farm households (2020)
Working Paper: Land-Use Changes, Nutrition, and Gender Roles in Indonesian Farm Households (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:crc990:24

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