74 C. Line Carpentier et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 82 2000 73–88
sification on cleared land are simulated: no intensifi- cation, intensification of non-livestock activities, and
intensification on all cleared land. In addition, intensi- fication on forested land modeled as low-impact forest
management is also simulated.
The study focuses on what researchers and poli- cymakers might do to design and manage intensi-
fication technologies that slow deforestation while maintaining or increasing farmers’ income. If halting
deforestation is the goal, it is found that sustainable intensification requires a redesign of the type of agri-
cultural technology being developed and made avail- able to farmers, and that agricultural intensification is
necessary but not sufficient to slow deforestation. Po- tential impacts on deforestation should be taken into
account at the onset of technology research. Intensifi- cation in forested areas, modeled as low-impact forest
management, is promising because it increases the value of the standing forest and thus should be further
researched.
The geographical focus of this study in the western Brazilian Amazon is the settlement project of Pedro
Peixoto in the state of Acre. This site was chosen be- cause of its biophysical and socioeconomic diversity,
and because, when this research was initiated, the area was relatively under-studied in comparison to the east-
ern Amazon. This site is also similar agroclimatically to much of the Amazon basin and to other tropical ar-
eas outside Latin America Gillison, 1999. For these reasons, the settlement was selected as one of the
sites for the alternatives to slash-and-burn ASB pro- gram — a long-term collaborative, interdisciplinary
research effort — under which the model presented here was developed. The focus on farm-level analysis
is useful to capture the heterogeneity in biophysical conditions, market access, market imperfections, or
market failure these farms face and the impact of this heterogeneity on land-use decisions.
This study aims to find whether settlement farmers in the western Brazilian Amazon will adopt more in-
tensive production systems and, if they do, the impact of this adoption on deforestation and incomes. The
next section reviews the intensification–extensification debate. Section 2.3 describes what it means to inten-
sify on settlement farms in the state of Acre. Section 3 describes how intensification–extensification de-
cisions are modeled. Section 4 simulates whether farmers adopt these intensification strategies and, if
they do, reports the income and deforestation impacts of this adoption. Section 5 concludes the study and
presents policy implications.
2. Intensification and deforestation in the forest margin
This section reviews the drivers of deforestation and the debate over the impact of agricultural intensifica-
tion on forests in tropical areas, and defines what it means to intensify for settlement farmers in the state
of Acre.
2.1. External and internal drivers of deforestation Over time, deforestation has been attributed to
both external macro-level and internal meso-level drivers. This study focuses on the internal factors
because past efforts to turn off the “external drivers” distorted
macro-economic policies
encouraging movements of people and capital to the forest margins,
such as directed colonization projects and subsidies for investments in the Amazon have largely failed to
effectively slow deforestation.
For Brazil, the following internal drivers have been put forward: poverty, property rights, poor soils, mar-
ket access, and undervaluation of the forest Hecht, 1984; Dale et al., 1993; Vosti and Reardon, 1997.
Poverty, property rights, and poor soils are believed to drive deforestation because farmers must deforest
to eat, to secure land title, or to continuously bring new land into cultivation to keep the same level of
production. Better market access and undervaluation of forest products and of the standing forest create
incentive to clear the land to produce more and in- crease income for details, see Vosti et al., 2001 or
Carpentier et al., 2000a.
Extensive, low-productivity agriculture, perhaps maintained as a consequence of the above-mentioned
factors in addition to others, is also considered a driver of deforestation because more land is needed
to feed an expanding population. This study focuses on extensive, low-productivity agriculture and under-
valuation of the standing forests and its products that drives deforestation because unprofitable forests
are replaced with more profitable land uses.
C. Line Carpentier et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 82 2000 73–88 75
2.2. The intensification–deforestation debate Two views still prevail on the impact of agricultural
intensification on forests in tropical agriculture. One states that food requirements can be met by increased
production from existing agricultural land, thereby removing pressure from forested areas marginal ar-
eas. The other maintains that increased profitability associated with technological progress in frontier
agriculture will stimulate deforestation Angelsen et al., 1999.
Since permanent agriculture has existed, the ex- panding populations’ food demand has been met
through deforestation — expansion of agricultural land into forested and marginal lands Bilsborrow and
Geores, 1994. With food demand expected to grow steadily over the next decades and most of the pro-
ductive land already in production, many argue that technological progress and intensification of agricul-
ture are necessary to reduce the pressure on tropical forests and marginal lands.
However, Kaimowitz and Angelsen 1998 found that empirical evidence of the deforestation effect of
agricultural intensification are ambiguous. The history of tropical agriculture also provides a multitude of
examples in which the adoption of new technolo- gies, in combination with the expansion of market
access for crops such as bananas, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber and sugar cane, led to widespread de-
forestation Barraclough and Ghimire, 1996. In these cases, technological progress induced more deforesta-
tion by making conversion of forests to agricultural land more profitable; it did not take the pressure off
the forest.
2.3. Current land uses in the Acre settlement What does it means to intensify for settlement
farmers in the western Brazilian Amazon? This ques- tion is answered by first presenting farmers’ current
practices. In 1994, some 160 households in the col- onization projects of Pedro Peixoto, Acre, and Theo-
broma, Rondônia, were selected for interviews Theo- broma was the other ASB site. Sample selection
was based on variation in access to markets prox- ied by quality of infrastructure in each season, soil
type and production potential, and years since initial
Fig. 1. Land-use systems on settlement farms in the western Brazilian Amazon.
settlement of lots in the subdivision of the project. The sample included some medium-sized operational
holdings on which farmers are now expanding their livestock activities up to approximately 200 ha, but
not large-scale ranchers. Of the farms visited in 1994, approximately 140 were re-surveyed in 1996, along
with an additional 86 farms representing more recent arrivals and squatters previously under-represented
see Witcover and Vosti, 1996; Vosti and Witcover, 1996; Vosti et al., 2001, for details. Fig. 1 sets out
the predominant paths through which forested land mostly logged over forest is converted to other uses,
and the amount of time in agricultural years par- ticular parcels tend to spend in specific uses for the
1994 sample. The predominant path appears in the middle; the land is deforested, cultivated for a couple
of years and planted to pasture. Sometimes the land goes through fallow cycles, with land staying in fal-
low for an average of 3 years before ending in pasture or remains in fallow and becomes secondary forest
secondary forest is included in the fallow category. This predominant path is confirmed by Fig. 2 show-
ing 1996 land-use patterns for farms of different ages, where age is determined by the number of years since
initial settlement of the lot. Clearly the trend is one of falling forest and rising pasture as the farm ages
Vosti et al., 2001.
From an environmental perspective, the challenge is to slow deforestation and reduce the amount of cleared
land going to pasture, while at least preserving farm incomes, or better yet increasing incomes. But this will
not be easy. Fig. 3 shows that nearly 50 of farmers’
76 C. Line Carpentier et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 82 2000 73–88
Fig. 2. Proportion of 1996 farms in each land use by age of farm settlement.
value of total output in 1994 was extracted from pas- ture and livestock activities milk and beef, while only
8 of farmers’ value of total output derived from the forest mainly Brazil nuts since timber extraction is
limited by administrative requirements making timber extraction practically impossible.
Against this backdrop of land-use systems and income-generating activities, what does it mean to
intensify? Intensification can mean 1 increasing the amounts of purchased inputs dedicated to a particular
activity indicated by a box in Fig. 1, 2 increas- ing the amount of labor dedicated to the activity,
3 increasing output per unit of land, 4 combining some of the above, 5 extending the useful life of a
Fig. 3. Settlement of farmers’ on-farm income sources value of total output.
particular land use, or 6 increasing the number of ‘arrows’ linking activities, thereby providing farmers
with more options. In this study and in the model used for the analysis,
intensification is viewed in an activity-specific way — products can be produced using different levels of
intensities. Higher levels of intensity usually but not always mean increased returns to land and labor, ad-
ditional purchased inputs, and increased sustainability in the sense that the land use ‘lasts longer’. Given
scarce labor and limited access to credit but relatively abundant land in the area, it is not clear a priori
whether these intensive systems will be adopted.
3. Analytical tool: a farm-level bioeconomic model
