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Smallholder Livelihoods, Wealth and Deforestation in the Eastern Amazon

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Abstract

In this paper, I examine patterns of wealth accumulation and their influence on deforestation among smallholders at Uruará and Redenção, in the state of Pará in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon. I argue that the development of the smallholder economy has not been a linear process, and the diversity of smallholder farming systems and their patterns of wealth accumulation have varied implications for the rate and magnitude of deforestation. However, whilst there are differential impacts of farming practices on deforestation—cattle ranching has a greater impact than cash cropping or subsistence agriculture—the stronger correlate of deforestation is the wealth of the farmers. Wealthier farmers not only tend to deforest more in absolute terms, but also show a slightly greater propensity to deforest whatever their production system. Though cattle production is a key driver of wealth accumulation and thus deforestation, a significant number of smallholders adopt diversified production systems. The main factors explaining the relationship between the farming systems and deforestation were years of residence on the lot, distance of the lot to main market and the amount of day labor hired—and not variables describing household structure.

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Notes

  1. The Redenção area comprises the municipalities of Redenção, Santa Maria das Barreiras, Santana de Araguaia and Cumarú in southern Pará.

  2. Two sets of images were produced. The first set consists of mosaics for the study area of Uruará for the years 1986, 1991, 1997 and 2001. The second set consists of mosaics for the Redenção area for the years 1986, 1992, 1996 and 2002. LANDSAT TM images were geo-referenced to their corresponding LANDSAT ETM + image (same path and row) for 1999/2000. A supervised classification was performed based on training sites identified during field work. A maximum likelihood procedure was performed in IDRISI (bands 2, 3, 4, and 5). Nine land-use classes were identified in Uruará, and six classes in Redenção.

  3. Walker et al. (2002) and Browder et al. (2004) defined wealth as initial wealth, though this indicator is often built taking into account a range of variables and using a variety of procedures.

  4. Detailed descriptions of the colonization program in Brazil can be found elsewhere—Moran (1981) for the Transamazon, and Hecht and Cockburn (1989) for a broader perspective.

  5. Monetary estimates are the amount of the product that was sold in the market multiplied by nominal producer prices during the year previous to the interview. Estimates for cattle-related revenues, considering the high temporal variability of farmers supply of animals, assume an annual off-take of 20% of the herd, including calves and adult cows and bulls. The assumption made here is similar to the adopted by Walker et al. (2002) who indicate that for smallholders with little or no sales, off-take may be taken to reflect herd growth, or capital accumulation, in which case the calculation of “off-take” represents a form of saving.

  6. The land allocation unit used by INCRA in Redenção (50 hectares) was smaller than in Uruará (100 hectares).

  7. In the case of Uruará, the loadings were number of cattle (0.8406), owned equipment (0.8083), total property size (0.7300), owned goods (0.7191), and number of lots (0.6691). The wealth index accounts for 57% of the variation in the original variables used in the analysis. In the case of Redenção, the number of lots was excluded since smallholders hold only one lot and contiguous lots were considered to each constitute a single landholding. The variable loadings were as follow: total property size (0.7795), number of cattle (0.7315), owned goods (0.69611), and owned equipment (0.6284). The wealth index in this case accounts for 50% of the common variance in the original variables used in the analysis. While it may have made sense to have classes that were not equal in size, the data were aggregated in quartiles since it is more appropriate from a statistical perspective to have equal-sized classes.

  8. Geographic positions were registered for at least two points on the boundaries of the lots in which farmers who were interviewed were resident. Boundary information from other lots owned by the households (in the cases in which farmers knew their number) were derived from INCRA property grid maps. Yet, it was not possible to infer boundary positions in Uruará in the cases in which persons hold more than two lots, and did not know the number of their other lots.

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Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of research funding from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia, and the support of the Institute of Environmental Research for Amazônia (IPAM), Belem, Brazil. I thank Billie Turner, Dianne Rocheleau, Robert G. Pontius, and Sven Wunder for their comments on a previous version of this paper. I also wish to thank Jean F. Tourrand, Marie G. Piketty, and Benoit Mertens from whom I benefited from discussions during my field work. Finally, I acknowledge the comments from two anonymous reviewers who contributed improvements to a previous version. Remaining errors are the author’s.

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  1. Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Jalan CIFOR Situ Gede, Bogor Barat, 16115, Indonesia

    Pablo Pacheco

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Pacheco, P. Smallholder Livelihoods, Wealth and Deforestation in the Eastern Amazon. Hum Ecol 37, 27–41 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-009-9220-y

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