Participation of Smallholders in Carbon Certified Agroforestry : What are the Determinants?
Benjamin, Emmanuel & Matthias Blum
The likelihood of poor smallholder farmers being exempted from participating in agroforestry with payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs, given their lack of: asset endowment, insecure property rights, and credit constraints, may hinder rural sustainable development. This may imply that an agriculture PES program is an exclusive clubb accessible only to a limited number of wealthier farmers. This study investigates the factors that motivate smallholder farmers to participate in The International Small Group Tree Planting Programme (TIST), an agroforestry with PES programs, in Kenya. The TIST program provides smallholder farmers with sustainable agriculture training and emission certification. Original data on 210 farmers, both members and non-members of TIST, were collected in parts of Kenya. We use a random utility model and a logistic regression approach for our theoretical and empirical analysis. Our findings indicate that the spread of information through formal and informal networks, land tenure and peer involvement in such programs influences TIST participation. We also found weak positive correlation between the adoption of agroforestry with PES and farmerss age. Conversely, participation by farmers does not seem to be influenced by their level of education or size of farmland.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015
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