Risks and returns from soil conservation: evidence from low-income farms in the Philippines
No hay miniatura disponible
Fecha
Autores
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
Resumen
Descripción
This paper examines risks and returns associated with soil conservation on hillside farms in the Philippines. Stochastic
efficiency analysis is combined with a heteroskedastic regression model to assess the impacts of contour hedgerows on lowincome
corn farms. Regression analysis indicates that, over time, contour hedgerows can improve yields up to 15% compared
with conventional practices. The analysis also provides weak support for a hypothesis that hedgerows are variance reducing.
However, results show that the reduction in yield variability afforded by hedgerows is modest, and that yield variability may
increase by as much as 5% as hedgerow intensity rises. Tests for stochastic dominance show that, compared with the
conventional tillage system, hedgerows do not constitute an unambiguously dominant production strategy. Stochastic
efficiency with respect to a function is used to identify a range for the coefficient of relative risk aversion within which
hedgerows dominate conventional tillage. Results suggest this range would be rather high; hedgerows dominate the
conventional cropping strategy only for decision-makers with relative risk aversion coefficients in the range 3-5.5.
Implications for soil conservation adoption in low-income settings are discussed. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights
reserved.