Crop Substitution Research Articles

Commodity prices and robust environmental regulation: Evidence from deforestation in Brazil

Increasing international agricultural commodity prices create pressure on tropical forests. We study the effectiveness of three regulatory policies implemented by Brazil in reducing this pressure: blacklisting of municipalities, the Soy Moratorium, and conservation zones. We use a triple difference approach that combines international agricultural commodity prices with the policies across three million km2 in the Brazilian Amazon. We find that the blacklisting program is effective, as it reduces deforestation related to the prices by 40%. The Soy Moratorium made deforestation in exposed municipalities more sensitive to non-soy prices, in line with crop substitution. Conservation zones amplify the effect of prices on deforestation on the remaining unprotected land, consistent with reduced land supply. Our results highlight that the effect of environmental regulation depends on the economic pressure to use natural resources.

Cocalero women and peace policies in Colombia

BackgroundIllicit crop economies are shaped by gender arrangements that can play an important role in the experiences of illicit crop workers. In Colombia, the coca production -considered a war economy- granted peasant women a source of access to productive resources (land, credit and seeds) and paid work, conditions that are difficult to find in other legal agrarian economies. For this reason, policies pursuing a transition from war to peace, such as the ones that emerged from the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla, must incorporate a gender perspective in order to acknowledge the social progress that women can achieve in war scenarios. MethodsThe empirical evidence comes from thirty-one in-depth and semi-structured interviews with cocalero peasants, social leaders and public officials; ethnographic fieldwork in two municipalities with the highest levels of illicit crop production (Puerto Asís and Tumaco); official documents of anti-drug and Alternative Development policies in Colombia, and other official information from the agencies in charge of implementing these policies; and data from the survey of participants of the National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops (PNIS) (National University of Colombia, 2019), and one dataset from the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics (the Quality of Life Survey of 2018). For the analysis of the data we used an open-codification method and conducted hypothesis tests with Welch's correction. ResultsIn Colombia, women involved in the coca economy experience a degree of empowerment that leads to increased income, time control and decision-making power. When we compared the lived experience of cocalero women with what the National Crop Substitution Programme -PNIS- offers, we found that the programme falls short from offering viable gender-sensitive alternatives, producing a setback in women's empowerment. ConclusionIllicit crop economies in war contexts can be a source of social advancement for marginalized populations, particularly women. Thus, peace policies that do not recognise these advances, i.e. that do not incorporate a gender perspective in their design, deepen gender-based inequalities.

Unintended Consequences of Alternative Development Programs: Evidence From Colombia's Illegal Crop Substitution

While force eradication through aerial spraying has large social costs, there is no evidence of the unexpected consequences of alternative development programs. This paper suggests an unintended effect of the largest crop substitution program in the world on political violence exploiting data on the recent Colombian program. The program’s community agreements increased the rate of social leaders’ killings by 546 %. My findings suggest a larger effect on municipalities where leaders oppose the expansion of illicit crops, organized crime does not hold consolidated power, different armed groups are present, and land conflicts exist. This paper contributes by providing empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that policies aimed at reducing illicit crops have unintended consequences for local communities.

Incidencia del proceso de paz con las FARC en la política antidrogas de Colombia

Este artículo estudia cómo las negociaciones de paz del Gobierno de Colombia con las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) impactaron la política antidrogas del país. Para ello, se revisa la literatura sobre economía de las guerras civiles y la economía del crimen como oficio, se estudia la política antidrogas durante las últimas dos décadas y se analizan las cifras oficiales consignadas en informes gubernamentales e internacionales sobre el comportamiento de los cultivos ilícitos, la producción y el tráfico de drogas. Los resultados muestran que la política antidrogas del Estado durante el gobierno de Santos, fundamentalmente basada en la erradicación voluntaria y la sustitución de cultivos, y una fuerte disminución de las aspersiones aéreas (erradicación forzosa), resultó ser un factor determinante en el incremento de los cultivos de cocaína.

Tobacco farming and current debt status among smallholder farmers in Manicaland province in Zimbabwe

IntroductionZimbabwe is the largest producer of tobacco leaf in Africa and the sixth largest globally. Tobacco leaf is a mainstay of the economy, accounting for about 10% of the country’s...

Eradication in the time of Covid: The case of Colombia

As usually happens in times of crisis and extreme situations, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to ongoing conflicts related to the cultivation of illicit crops in Colombia are a complex mix of change and continuity. In November 2016, the country's government, headed by then President Santos, and the main guerrilla, the FARC, arrived at a peace agreement including an explicit commitment to developing a national crop substitution program. Accordingly, the government set it up– –the PNIS, or National Plan of Comprehensive Illicit Crop Substitution, —and allowed national and regional organizations of growers of coca, marihuana and poppy to operate legally, as long as they were committed to crop substitution. Both the government and the judicial system also came together to support the suspension of aerial fumigations. Aerial fumigation of coca crops has a long history in drug eradication campaigns in Colombia, and its implementation has almost always triggered waves of resistance (see for example Ramirez, 2001) due to its traumatic impacts on peasant livelihoods. However, a right-wing political party overtly hostile to the Peace Agreement won the 2018 elections. The new president, Ivan Duque, has repeatedly equivocated regarding his overall support for the agreement. On the other hand, he has crucially undermined some of its key arrangements, especially the PNIS, which became one of the main targets of his government (Acero et al., 2019). Thus, when the Covid pandemic arrived in the country three interrelated processes were already unfolding. First, the Colombian government was backtracking from the peace-related commitments and policies regarding illicit crops, and replacing them for a hard-nosed ‘war on drugs’ orientation. This involved the announcement of the creation of “future zones”; territories which would concentrate comprehensive state efforts to rapidly knock-out the drugs economy (Presidencia de la Republica, 2019). It also implied an effort to reinstate aerial fumigation, which was partially successful. In effect, the Constitutional Court ruled in July 2019 that aerial fumigation could resume, but only after consulting the population of the territories where the fumigation would take place through public hearings. It was related as well to a major offensive of manual eradication, which increasingly took the form of military operations (see the Guayabero case for example (El Tiempo, 2020b)). The eradicators went into the respective area under the protection of the Army, the anti-narcotics police or the anti-riots police (ESMAD). Second, and due to this, coca growers increasingly had to resort to physically defending their plots (and livelihoods) from the attacks from the state security agencies. According to peasants organizations, during these confrontations four protesters have lost their lives (Colombia 2020, 2020a, 2020c; El Tiempo, 2020a; La Opinion, 2020). Third, the social mobilization by coca growing peasants was accompanied by generalized resistance and disquiet, leading to protests, with trust in the president falling below 30% throughout 2019 (EFE,2019). In November 2019, hundreds of thousands of Colombians took the streets to vent their anger and frustration against several governmental policies. Pushing forward a set of policies to defend Colombian families and children from drugs seemed to Duque and his team an ideal path to claw back elusive support of the electorate and legitimacy for his government. Paradoxically, however, his main trump card, aerial fumigation, was almost the only anti-drug policy rebuked by the vast majority of Colombians, with more than 75% of respondents supporting the suspension of aerial fumigations according to a survey implemented by the Ministry of Justice during Santos’ presidency (Ministerio de Justicia, 2016). But when geopolitical considerations are taken into account, it becomes clear that the paradox is only apparent.

From Alternative Development to Development-Oriented Drug Policies

This policy comment aims to trace the evolution of the concept of alternative development (AD)—alongside changes in the global drug control regime during recent decades—from a practitioner’s point of view. Since the 1970s, drug supply reduction was primarily concentrated on law enforcement and crop substitution programmes. Following negative experiences, some governments focused on development-led approaches that consider the socio-economic and political conditions of drug crop cultivating areas. Both the 1988 United Nations drug control convention (Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances), the first to mention the concept of AD, and the 1998 Political Declaration created the latitude necessary for AD to evolve into a ‘third pillar’ within the traditional drug supply control system. Another political milestone was the Outcome Document of the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS), as it was the first to dedicate an entire chapter solely to development-oriented drug control. In recent years—unexpectedly given the niche that AD had formerly been—a growing number of countries have declared that they either implement domestic AD measures or support them abroad. The observable increase in AD interventions may be due to a growing engagement of governments, but could also be explained by a rebranding of existing measures, given the increased popularity of AD. The funding situation in light of this enhanced political momentum is, however, rather poor. Latest figures, from 2013, show that AD only accounts for 0.1 per cent of global official development assistance. Though there seems to have been a slight increase in funding recently, the authors argue that a real surge in funding is so far not in sight.

Climate change and adaptation in agriculture: Evidence from US cropping patterns

Understanding how a changing climate alters regional comparative advantage is crucial for evaluating the economic impacts of climate change. I exploit temporal variation in decades-long averages of weather and estimate crop acreage elasticities with respect to climate change in the United States. I find substantial climate change adaptation through acreage adjustments in US agriculture. Climate change explains about 10–35% of the observed US corn and soybean expansion over the past 30 years, and climate-driven crop substitution has played an important role. The acreage response is heterogeneous across major and minor producing areas and across dryland and irrigated counties.

The Last Harvest? From the US Fentanyl Boom to the Mexican Opium Crisis

For decades, farmers in the most marginalised regions of Mexico have depended for survival on the illicit cultivation of opium poppy for the US heroin market. In 2017 they could earn up to 20,000 pesos ($950–$1,050 dollars) per kilo of opium, which channelled around 19 billion pesos ($1 billion dollars) into the country’s poorest communities, sustaining regional economies, religious ceremonies, and intra-community relations while stemming out-migration to Mexican cities and the US. With the recent upsurge in fentanyl use in the US, however, the demand for Mexican heroin has fallen sharply, meaning that farmers are now being paid around 6000 to 8000 pesos ($315–415 dollars) per kilo of raw opium. Thus the total money being paid to opium producing villages has dropped to an unprecedented low of 7 billion pesos ($370 million dollars). Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two poppy-producing regions of Mexico – one in the State of Nayarit, one in the State of Guerrero – this article shows that today, farmers cannot make a profit from opium once fertilizers and other capital inputs have been taken into account; village economies are starting to dry up; and out-migration is on the up. But this economic emergency opens the possibility of wrestling Mexico’s opium-growing regions from the control of Mexico’s Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). This article concludes by addressing several possible solutions to what we term ‘the Mexican Opium Crisis’ – including crop substitution or opium legalization for medicinal use – and evaluates how realistic they are in the Mexican context.

The Rise and Persistence of Illegal Crops: Evidence from a Naive Policy Announcement

Well-intended policies often have negative unintended consequences if they fail to foresee the different ways in which individuals may respond to the new set of incentives. When widespread and persistent, these may lead to a net reduction of social welfare. Focusing on the case of anti-drug policies, in this paper we show that the recent unprecedented surge in the growing of illicit coca crops in Colombia was the result of a naive and untimely policy announcement during peace negotiations between the government and the FARC guerrillas. On May 2014, the parties’ peace delegations issued a press release announcing that coca-growing farmers would receive material incentives for voluntary crop substitution once a final agreement had been reached. To evaluate the anticipation effect of this announcement we exploit the cross sectional variation on both the cost advantage of growing coca (using an ecological measure of coca suitability) and the expected benefits of doing so (using a predicted measure of where the material benefits would h ave b een t argeted). Coca plantations levels remained high even after the implementation of the announced incentives’ scheme. We explain this persistence by documenting that the surge in coca growing is differentially higher in areas with presence illegal armed groups, that benefited financially from availability of a key input in the drug trade.

Life cycle assessment and socioeconomic evaluation of the illicit crop substitution policy in Colombia

AbstractThe peace treaty of Colombia contemplates a crop substitution policy seeking to replace coca crops with legal alternatives. Although crop substitution diverts funding of illegal activities and provides an income to farmers, it is important to understand how the change to a variety of legal crops (coffee, sugarcane, and cacao) affects the income of farmers, and whether there is an environmental advantage of a crop over another. This study applies life cycle assessment (LCA) coupled with socioeconomic indicators to two regions, Putumayo and Catatumbo, over different policy scenarios. LCA results show that a policy success does not ensure a lower environmental impact across the board. Legal crops consume less fuel than coca crops, which reduce fuel‐related impacts, but the use of fertilizer in coffee and pesticide use in sugarcane increase toxicity‐related impacts. The results, however, are affected by a lack of characterization factors of agrochemicals, but once these are replaced by proxies, coca crops appear to have greater toxicity impacts. In terms of individual crops, cacao crops have a lower environmental impact than coffee and sugarcane, but it also takes the longest to harvest, which may pose a financial risk to farmers. The socioeconomic analysis reveals that for Catatumbo farmers, a policy success reduces the income, whereas for Putumayo farmers, a policy success increases income and job generation. In general, it was observed that the dynamics of the illegal supply chain vary for each region, influencing the environmental and socioeconomic outcome of the substitution policy.

Averting wheat blast by implementing a 'wheat holiday': In search of alternative crops in West Bengal, India.

The emergence of wheat-blast in Bangladesh in the 2015–16 wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) crop threatens the food security of South Asia. A potential spread of the disease from Bangladesh to India could have devastating impacts on India’s overall food security as wheat is its second most important staple food crop. West Bengal state in eastern India shares a 2,217 km-long border with Bangladesh and has a similar agro-ecology, enhancing the prospects of the disease entering India via West Bengal. The present study explores the possibility of a ‘wheat holiday’ policy in the nine border districts of West Bengal. Under the policy, farmers in these districts would stop wheat cultivation for at least two years. The present scoping study assesses the potential economic feasibility of alternative crops to wheat. Of the ten crops considered, maize, gram (chickpea), urad (black gram), rapeseed and mustard, and potatoes are found to be potentially feasible alternative crops. Any crop substitution would need support to ease the transition including addressing the challenges related to the management of alternative crops, ensuring adequate crop combinations and value chain development. Still, as wheat is a major staple, there is some urgency to support further research on disease epidemiology and forecasting, as well as the development and dissemination of blast-resistant wheat varieties across South Asia.

Applying the Technology Choice Model in Consequential Life Cycle Assessment: A Case Study in the Peruvian Agricultural Sector

SummaryDemand for grapes to produce pisco in southern‐coastal Peru is expected to double by 2030. However, the appellation of this beverage confines the production and limits the space for agricultural expansion, leading to a situation in which potential competition for resources with established constraints is foreseen. Hence, the objective of this study is to understand the environmental impacts, focused on climate change and water consumption, linked to the agricultural dynamism in the valleys of Ica and Pisco due to an increase in the demand of pisco. For this, the viticulture system was analyzed regarding predicted changes in terms of expansion, displacement or intensification using a consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) approach, identifying the environmental consequences of these shifts. A two‐step CLCA model was used based on the results of a previous attributional study, in which marginal effects were estimated following the stochastic technology‐of‐choice model (STCM) operational framework. Results identified a potential for the increase of pisco production based on crop substitution in the valleys of Ica and Pisco and suggest that greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption will be reduced locally, but the displaced agricultural production would reverse this tendency. Regardless of the policy implications of the results in the analyzed system, the proposed methodology constitutes a robust methodology that can be applied to other highly constrained agricultural systems, namely, those regulated by geographic indications.

China's New Road for Tobacco Control: Tobacco Crop Substitution.

The article explores tobacco control in China as of 2018, focusing on whether or not tobacco crop substitution could aid the cause. Additional topics discussed include how China sets a quota for tobacco leaf production to ensure revenue to the state, the health impact of China's transition to a developed country and world economic power, and social conditions for farmers in China. The WHO (World Health Organization) and the United Nations Development Program are also noted.

Millet a sustainable crop: Growth and instability in area and production of millets

The millet belong to a group of small size food grains, mainly grown around the world for food and fodder. In this paper an attempt has been made to analyse the trend in area and production of millets across country including Karnataka. India is the leading producer in the world millet production, followed by the African countries of Nigeria and Niger. Total food grain production in the country was of about 271.98 MT and cereals production was 44.34 million tonnes. The growth rate and instability index in millet’s area and production in India and Karnataka has been examined using secondary data for the period of 10 years, from 2006-07 to 2015-16. This study is confined to major millets (sorghum/ Jowar, Bajra and finger millet) and minor millets (referred as small millets). From the analysis it is found that all the millets sorghum, Bajra , finger millet and small millets had negative growth rate -4.02 per cent, -3.41 per cent, -1.47 per cent -5.68 per cent, respectively. Similarly the production growth rate of sorghum and small millets were found negative, bajra and finger millets had least positive growth rate. It is also found from the analysis that the instability index of millet area was lower than the instability index of millet production. It can be concluded that the declined growth rate of millet cultivation may be due to various factors like crop substitution, less awareness about the millet and its health benefits, low price to the millets compared to other crops. Including millets in everyday food routine can enhances the health benefits.

Livelihood sustainability assessment of coffee and cocoa producers in the Amazon region of Ecuador using household types

Supporting small farmer livelihoods in fragile, biodiverse regions, such as tropical forests, is a priority for many development agencies and national governments. These regions tend to be characterized by recent human settlements, increasing populations and infrastructure development, as well as competitive land use activities, which exert pressure on fragile ecosystems. Improvement in livelihood strategies often focuses on increasing yields by improving productivity, but without taking into account alternative methods, such as better agricultural practices and their dependence on agrochemical inputs, changing land use through crop substitution, or improving product commercialization. In this research, we use household types, defined according to different land use patterns, in the Northern Amazon region of Ecuador to explore the limitations of, and identify future options for, improving livelihood strategies based on small-scale coffee and cocoa production. The results of the different types are discussed in order to highlight the methods' utility and identify benefits in terms of environmental and social objectives versus economic profitability. Lessons are drawn that could be useful in applications of public policy aimed at the betterment of small coffee grower and cocoa farmer livelihood strategies, which involve thousands of families in the Amazon region of Ecuador, without compromising the environment.

Successful experience with tobacco crop substitution in Yuxi, Yunnan, China

Successful experience with tobacco crop substitution in Yuxi, Yunnan, China

Tapping into rubber: China’s opium replacement program and rubber production in Laos

Despite centuries of state-directed eradication efforts, opium cultivation persists in northern Laos and Myanmar. The most recent of these efforts is China’s Opium Replacement Program (ORP). Like other illicit crop substitution programmes, the ORP seeks to provide opium cultivators with licit livelihood alternatives. Unlike other programmes, it does so by supporting Chinese agribusiness investors in the region – predominantly rubber companies – instead of targeting opium producers directly. Rubber is not, however, economically or ecologically speaking, an optimal replacement for opium. Rubber and opium have contrasting production cycles and market characteristics, and are grown at different altitudes by different types of producers (large corporations and smallholders, respectively). Due to this apparent mismatch, critics have dismissed the ORP’s opium eradication aims, viewing it as a pretext for land grabs. I argue instead that rubber makes sense as an opium replacement crop based on Chinese and Lao state views that opium is a symptom of weak state control and underdevelopment in the borderlands and rubber a tried and true modernising crop. I thus offer that the ORP attempts replacement by displacement – not necessarily by physically replacing opium fields with rubber plantations, but rather by drawing land and labour into rubber, away from opium.

History of the Emergence and Spatiotemporal Spread of Tobacco Mosaic Virus in China

The ongoing spread of Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) throughout China threatens and diminishes proceeds from production of tobacco and other crops. Determining how and when TMV first emerged in China, its current evolutionary rate, diffusion pathways, spatial and plant host distributions, can help minimize the risk associated with mosaic disease (MD). Here, 110 TMV Coat Protein (CP) gene sequences sampled from 12 distinct plant hosts between 1997 and 2015 from 18 geographical locations within China (14 Provinces, two Municipalities and two Autonomous regions) were used in a probabilistic Bayesian inferential framework implemented in BEAST v1.8.1 to reconstruct TMV's evolutionary history from emergence to spatiotemporal diffusion. This entailed estimating and inferring; (a) the time when and location where TMV's most recent common ancestor (MRCA) emerged, (b) the evolutionary rate, (c) diffusion pathways, (d) levels of genetic diversity and, (e) phylogenetic relationships amongst viruses. This study infers that TMV emerged around 1924 (95% HPD; 1860 to 1971) in Henan province. Its mean nucleotide substitution rate of 1.09 × 10-3 is marginally higher than previous TMV and Tobamovirus species rates. TMV's current wide spatial and plant host distribution across China is due largely to (i) utilization of 15 Bayes factor supported diffusion pathways, 60% of which were outward bound viral movements from Yunnan province to proximal and distant sampling locations and (ii) a growing shift toward cost-efficient tobacco crop substitution alternatives and adoption of a mixed-crop farming system. These analyses also suggest that Yunnan province is most probably both a source rather than a sink of TMV dispersal throughout China and a major thoroughfare of trans-China TMV movements. Finally, results also indicate that TMV populations exhibited both low effective population sizes and levels of genetic diversity, while individuals from distinct hosts were phylogenetically similar probably due to strong bottlenecks and purifying selection.

Traditional farming in the mountainous region of Bangladesh and its modifications

Shifting cultivation is a traditional farming system practiced in the tropical mountainous areas. Although it has been widely perceived as an economically inefficient and environmentally harmful agricultural production system, recent science reviews, however, indicate that the deleterious impacts of shifting cultivation on environment may have been overestimated. Despite the pressures of agricultural intensification in areas where shifting cultivation occurs, farmers across the tropics still maintain this traditional farming system. The objective of this study was to explore existing traditional shifting cultivation practices and their various modifications including the innovative farming techniques developed by farmers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), the mountainous region of Bangladesh, and examine their importance with respect to recent socio-economic and environmental changes. The study revealed that shifting cultivation still exists as the most dominant farming method which supports livelihoods and culture of the hill ethnic people. However, demand for more food and household income to meet livelihood needs of an increasing population combined with a rapid deterioration of soil and water quality over decades contributed to development of innovative farming practices through fallow land farming, crop substitution, agroforestry and homestead gardening in the CHTs. Through these farming techniques farmers maintain a strong relationship with traditional knowledge system embedded in the age-old shifting cultivation practices.Today state policies and market forces act in favor of replacement of traditional farming with intensive cash crop agriculture. It seems that disappearance of traditional farming practices from the hills may threaten local biodiversity and food security. It may be recommended that shifting cultivation should be encouraged in areas where they have potential for contributing to preservation of native biodiversity and ecosystem services, and protection of local peoples' food security and cultural identity.