Séminaire COURNOT – Isabelle CHORT (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour)

Détails de l'événement :

Titre : Agricultural Shocks, Coping Policies and Deforestation: Evidence from the Coffee Leaf Rust Epidemic in Mexico

Co-auteur : Berk Öktem

Résumé : Deforestation in the tropics is a major issue that interacts with global environmental changes, and the mediating role of negative agricultural shocks is ambiguous. We investigate the impact of the latest massive outbreak of coffee leaf rust (CLR) in Central America on deforestation in Mexico. CLR is a fungal disease that negatively affects coffee yields. We exploit the gradual and random diffusion of the epidemic across coffee-growing municipalities and estimate a difference-in-difference model. We find more deforestation in CLR-affected municipalities. The observed time pattern of response to the CLR suggests the concurrent role of government subsidies and incentives through the PROCAFE program, launched in 2014, that funded and promoted the replacement of traditional coffee trees by CLR-resistant hybrids. An event analysis shows that in municipalities affected by the CLR in 2012 and 2013, deforestation increased with a two to three year lag after the outbreak, while deforestation started simultaneously to CLR in municipalities affected after 2014. We find no significant increase in agricultural land, suggesting that deforestation was not driven by agricultural extension. These results suggest that deforestation occurred within coffee cultivation areas through the substitution of hybrids, more adapted to open sun cultivation, to traditional coffee varieties, grown under shade trees in agroforestry systems. Our results emphasize the vulnerability of agroforestry systems to exogenous shocks. Adverse consequences of short-term policy responses point out the need to anticipate future threats in order to design adequate policies that help farmers cope with shocks while preserving biodiversity and ecosystems.

Lieu du séminaire : Salle du Conseil et ZOOM

Lien ZOOM : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84397926899?pwd=T3Zmc3F0Q2N4TDdVL2UvejZpbllwUT09

Agenda des séminaires : https://www.beta-economics.fr//seminaires-cournot-2021-2022/