Stochastic Food Prices and Slash-and-Burn Agriculture

Environment and Development Economics, Vol. 4, pp. 61-176, 1999

Posted: 26 Dec 1998 Last revised: 23 May 2011

See all articles by Christopher B. Barrett

Christopher B. Barrett

Cornell University - Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management

Abstract

This paper explores the interrelationship between poverty, risk, and deforestation by small farmers in the low-income tropics. A nonseparable household model reveals how exogenous shocks to the mean or variance of a food price distribution might affect peasants' incentives to clear forest. The resulting links between food price policy, farmer behavior, and deforestation offer an innovative explanation of the vicious cycle of peasant immiserization and tropical deforestation. An intriguing, testable hypothesis also emerges: that market-oriented reforms that increase the mean and variance of food prices may inadvertently stimulate deforestation in economies in which a sizable proportion of farmers are net buyers.

JEL Classification: Q1, O1

Suggested Citation

Barrett, Christopher B., Stochastic Food Prices and Slash-and-Burn Agriculture. Environment and Development Economics, Vol. 4, pp. 61-176, 1999, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=141214 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.141214

Christopher B. Barrett (Contact Author)

Cornell University - Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/cbb2/

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