This paper uses comprehensive farm-level data from the eastern Brazilian Amazon, to show that proximity to markets had a significant positive correlation with fertilizer adoption, even after controlling for liquidity, land tenure, education, experience and access to rural extension services.
Multiple constraints prevent smallholders from adopting fertilizers even with regional supply of agricultural inputs expanding and soils being worn-out. Few smallholders in the study completely replaced nutrients from vegetation with fertilizers. Instead, the authors found that a hybrid system that combines nutrients from vegetation and fertilizers was approximately twice as common as exclusive fertilizer use. We suggest that the option for this diversified “nutrient portfolio” may result not only from a lack of capital or knowledge regarding return on fertilizer use, but also from the need to adapt to the economic constraints facing smallholders and minimize risk.
Results indicate that a rural extension programme aimed at supporting a rapid and complete replacement of ashes from vegetation by fertilizers could prove unsuccessful for Amazonian smallholders.
Journal article / Secondary forests can be vital to conserve biodiversity and trap carbon, but are still no substitute for undisturbed primary forest.
Journal article / This study considers how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice.
Journal article / An international team warns that a failure to act quickly and decisively will risk unprecedented species loss in the most diverse parts of the planet.
