How much do farmers depend on cash crop income?
A new publication in the Journal of Land Use Science highlights the dependency of four villages in northeastern Madagascar on cash crop income.
By comparing farmers' income gains from cash crop production with the cost of buying rice, the authors show that focusing on cash crop production is advantageous in monetary terms but comes with a high risk in terms of climate change, price volatility and possible crop theft. Farmers face a "lock-in" effect in vanilla production. Without the income from vanilla production, they would face significant welfare losses. This insight must be taken into account when designing strategies for more sustainable development in resource-rich but poverty-prone regions. external pageArticle