Economics
Labor scarcity as an underlying cause of the increasing prevalence of deforestation due to cattle pasture development in the southern Yucatán region
Document Type
Article
Abstract
We investigate the problem of understanding the drivers of land use and its change in the southern Yucatán region. Our household data drawn from villages across the region show that as the amount of land devoted to crop cultivation has fallen, the amount of land devoted to pastureland has increased. We investigate this trend using a suite of three reinforcing investigative methods: (1) description and interpretation of direct evidence; (2) comparison of expected returns across main agricultural land uses; and (3) econometric modeling. We find that the increasing prominence of cattle ranching, or the prelude to it by planting pasture, is in part because of the constraints households face in family labor, one of the household's key resources, and the relatively lower labor requirements of cattle ranching. The activity of cattle ranching fits particularly well with the constraints and incentives faced by the typical household in the region. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.
Publication Title
Regional Environmental Change
Publication Date
2-9-2010
Volume
10
Issue
3
First Page
191
Last Page
203
ISSN
1436-3798
DOI
10.1007/s10113-010-0110-z
Keywords
deforestation, land use change, modeling agricultural, Yucatán
Repository Citation
Busch, Christopher and Geoghegan, Jacqueline, "Labor scarcity as an underlying cause of the increasing prevalence of deforestation due to cattle pasture development in the southern Yucatán region" (2010). Economics. 78.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_economics/78