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Land Abandonment in an Agricultural Frontier After a Plant Invasion: The Case of Bracken Fern in Southern Yucatán, Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Laura Schneider  and
Jacqueline Geoghegan
Laura Schneider
Affiliation:
Department of Geography at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey
Jacqueline Geoghegan
Affiliation:
Department of Economics at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
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Abstract

Plant invasions and their impact on land use pose difficult research questions, due to the complex relationships between the ecological nature of the invasion and the human responses to the invasion. This paper focuses on the linkages between an invasion of bracken fern and land use decisions in an agricultural frontier in southern Mexico. Agriculture in this region is practiced on an extensive basis, using traditional slash-and-burn techniques of temporary cultivation and continuous rotation through forest fallow. We investigate the factors that affect the decision of a subsistence farmer to either continue cultivating an invaded agricultural plot or permanently abandon the plot and cultivate elsewhere. We develop an agricultural household model of land use choices, where households maximize utility subject to constraints on land, labor, and income. We subsequently test the hypotheses raised, using data from a small household survey performed in the region in 2002.

Keywords

bracken fern invasionland abandonmentagricultural household modelMexico
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 2006 , pp. 167 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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