The Impact of Non-Traditional Export Agriculture on Income and Food Availability in Guatemala: An Intra-Household Perspective

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of non-traditional agriculture exports (NTAE) in highland Guatemala on the level and distribution of household income, and the financing and purchase of food items. Heckman's two-step procedure was used to control for self-selection of NTAE producers and potential correlation of preferences. Farmers with greater extension of land, as well as younger Catholic farmers with higher-quality land, are most likely to adopt the new crops (broccoli, snow peas (mange-tout!), and NTAE crops are highly profitable for those who adopt them. Despite the widespread use of female labour in the production of NTAE crops, the extent of adoption is not negatively associated with women's ability to generate independent income. Land devoted to the new crops also exhibits a strong positive relationship with subsistence production of corn and beans. Weak evidence supports the hypothesis that distinct intra-household income transfer patterns obtained in NTAE crop-adopting households compared with non-adopting households: in the former, the level of the weekly food allowance provided to women by their husbands is less responsive to changes in both household and female income, making women's earnings a more important overall determinant of food expenditure. A simulation exercise showed that households that have not adopted new crops would use increases in income to augment food expenditures to a much greater extent than adopting households. Within adopting households, the impact of increases in women's income on food expenditures is nearly double that of increases in men's income. Women's flexibility with regard to the allocation of their labour time and income plays an important role in the relative success of non-traditional agriculture as a means of improving household food availability. Improving the food consumption of poor households is often an important implicit or explicit goal of income-generating strategies such as the promotion of non-traditional agricultural export (NTAE) crops. However, a fair amount of controversy surrounds the strength of the relationship between increases in household income and greater access to and intake of nutritious foods. This is particularly the case when those increases in income are based on the displacement of subsistence crops and/or are biased in flavour of men, who may have less propensity than women to spend marginal income gains on food for the family. The nutritional impact of NTAE in highland Guatemala was assessed in a conceptual framework that accounts for the mediating influences of changes in household income, subsistence food production, and alterations in intra-household resource transfers. The data were drawn from a survey of over 300 rural households in five central highland communities between October 1990 and August 1991.