Rural Development Policies and Sustainable Land Use in the ...

ECONOMETRIC RESULTS 67
with a higher dependency ratio, and more
common in female-headed households. The
negative association with household size is
unexpected, as a larger household’s family
labor endowment is expected to favor labor
intensive land management practices such
as this. These results may reflect greater demand
for such resources and greater poverty
among larger households: larger households
need more fuel for cooking and other purposes
and poorer households may have less
access to fodder for their animals or fuel
sources, and thus may be less interested in
incorporating crop residues. The positive association
of female household head with crop
residue incorporation was also unexpected;
we are not sure why this was observed.
The negative effect of the dependency ratio
could be reflecting tighter labor constraints
in households with more dependents, which
inhibit adoption of this practice, but could
also be due to greater poverty and scarcity
of fodder and fuel that may be associated
with high dependency.
Crop residue incorporation is more likely
in areas with greater road density, but less
likely (weakly statistically significant) in
areas with higher population density. Greater
road access may increase the returns to labor
invested in labor-intensive land management
practices such as crop residue incorporation,
although this is contrary to our
findings with regard to the impacts of road
access on minimum/zero tillage. The negative
association with population density
likely reflects greater scarcity of fodder and
fuel resources in more densely populated
areas.
Crop residue incorporation is more likely
to be used by households that participate
in conservation extension programs or more
general agricultural extension programs, but
less likely to be used by households that
participate in longer term agricultural training
programs. The negative association
with agricultural training but positive association
with agricultural extension is similar
to our findings with regard to zero/minimum
tillage, and again may reflect more focus of
agricultural training on technologies of benefit
to livestock producers, and more focus
of agricultural extension on conservation
technologies for crop production. Households
who participate in nongovernmental
organization (NGO) programs are more
likely to incorporate crop residues, while
those who belong to producers or campesino
organizations and those who belong to a
rural bank or caja rural are less likely to
incorporate residues. While NGOs appear to
promote such conservation practices, other
producer and financial organizations appear
to promote more focus on other uses of
household labor and resources.
Crop residues are more likely to be incorporated
on larger plots, possibly because
tillage using animal traction is easier on
larger plots. Probably for a similar reason,
crop residue incorporation is more common
on hillsides than the bottom of a hill (soils
tend to be heavier and harder to till at the
bottom) and more common on relatively
flat slopes than on moderate or steep slopes.
Crop residue incorporation is more likely
where stone walls have been constructed
on the parcel, perhaps because of the complementary
nature of stone walls and crop
residue incorporation, as both measures help
to conserve soil and soil moisture. Crop
residue incorporation is less likely where
other land uses besides annual crops are
important. This is not surprising, as tillage
practices are used mainly for annual crops.
Use of External Inputs
The determinants of external inputs use are
shown in Table 5.6. The types of inputs considered
include inorganic fertilizer, herbicides,
and insecticides. 50
50
We also ran a similar regression for “other external inputs,” which included fungicides, combined fertilizer and
herbicides, and other input combinations. However, the mixed nature of the “other inputs” category complicates