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

ECONOMETRIC RESULTS 85
income per capita. These findings contradict
the common presumption that land titling
would increase farmers’ use of inputs, productivity,
and income by increasing access to
credit and tenure security. Apparently lack of
land titles is not a major constraint to adoption
of land management practices, inputs,
or productivity in the regions studied.
There are some differences in land
management of leased or borrowed versus
owned plots. Adoption of no burning is less
likely on borrowed and leased-in plots,
probably because this improves soil fertility
in the longer term, but perhaps at the expense
of short-term fertility due to the release
of nutrients by burning. By contrast,
use of fertilizer, herbicides, and insecticides
is more likely on leased-in than on owneroperated
plots. We do not find any significant
difference between leased-in and owneroperated
plots in terms of annual crop yields,
however. 59 Thus land tenancy arrangements
appear to operate relatively efficiently, without
significant differences in productivity
on leased vs. owner-operated plots. Nevertheless,
there may be some differences in the
sustainability of land management on leasedin
and borrowed plots, as evidenced by the
lower propensity of tenants than owneroperators
to adopt no burning practices.
Physical Capital
Ownership of machinery and equipment
has significant impacts on land management
practices, input use, productivity, and
income per capita. Households owning more
machinery and equipment are less likely to
use zero or minimum tillage, or to use herbicides,
probably because they own equipment
for tilling the soil. Households owning
more equipment use less family labor but
more hired labor in crop production, probably
because the opportunity costs of such
farmers’ time is higher and because they can
afford to hire labor. Ownership of machinery
and equipment is associated with higher
value of production of perennial crops and
with higher income per capita. Investigation
of the interaction of machinery ownership
with livelihood strategies in the income regression
revealed that machinery and equipment
investments are most remunerative
to basic grains/farmworkers, coffee producers,
and diversified basic grains/livestock/
farmworkers. Larger amounts of machinery
and equipment help a household to put its
basic assets (land but especially labor) to
more productive use and generate more income.
This is especially important for households
with relatively high opportunity costs
of labor. Households owning more livestock
are less likely than other households to use
inorganic fertilizer, but are more likely to
use insecticides. As with machinery ownership,
greater livestock ownership is associated
with less use of family labor and more
use of hired labor in crop production, probably
for similar reasons. However, we found
insignificant impacts of livestock ownership
on crop production and per capita income.
Thus, investments in livestock do not appear
to be a clear pathway from poverty for
households in the regions studied.
Human Capital and Gender
Education has less influence on livelihood
strategies and income than we expected,
probably due to the limited amount of variation
in education levels in our sample
households. While low levels and little variation
in formal schooling of hillside households
seem to disable our statistical analysis
of the effect of formal education, other research
(Perry and Jaramillo 2004) suggests
that in Honduras every year of additional
education increases income by about 10 percent,
with upper secondary education having
the highest returns. Greater education is
weakly associated with more use of fertilizer
and greater perennial crop yields, possibly
because of the effects of education on
capital availability and farmers’ knowledge.
59
There were no leased-in plots used for perennial crops in the sample.