Diffusion of sustainable agriculture in the Brazilian tropical rain forest: A discrete choice analysis

This article focuses on the reduction of tropical deforestation through public policies that support the adoption of sustainable agriculture in the city of Ouro Preto do Oeste, Rondônia. A majority of the farmers who live in the Brazilian Amazon use slash-and-burn agriculture. This agricultural method involves the clearing and burning of tropical forests to plant annual crops such as corn, rice, and beans. Slash-and-burn agriculture has been found to be an inappropriate method of farming in tropical soils, since the soils are stripped of their nutrients when cleared, rendering the land useless for agricultural purposes after only 3-5 years of use. This article models the choice between the agricultural technologies of slash-and-burn and sustainable agriculture and estimates the model using farm-level survey data collected in Ouro Preto do Oeste. We use the empirical results to make recommendations as to how policy could influence the adoption of sustainable agriculture.