Introduction: the role of agricultural technologies in tropical deforestation

Imagine a world where the demand for food and other agricultural products is constant or increases regularly as populations and incomes grow. Land can only be used for agriculture or forest. Then the only ways to keep more land in forest are to increase agricultural yields, reduce population growth or depress incomes. The amount of land devoted to agriculture equals the total demand for agricultural products divided by the average yield (output per hectare). Technological progress resulting in higher yields means less land in agriculture and more in forest. Now imagine another world. Farmers who live in this secondworldwill do anything they can to increase their profits. They can sell all the produce they want for a fixed price and obtain all the land, labour and credit they need, also for a fixed price.What will these farmers do if a profitable technological change increases their yields or lowers their input costs? They will certainly cultivate more land since farming has become more profitable. If agriculture and forest are still the only possible land uses, forest cover will decline. Unlike in our first world, technological progress leads to forest destruction. Which world do we live in? Does technological progress in agriculture protect or endanger tropical forests? Do we face a ‘win–win’ situation between farmer incomes and food production on the one hand and forest conservation on the other? Or is there a trade-off between the two? This book attempts to answer these questions. The answers depend heavily on the assumptions we make about type of technology, farmer characteristics, market conditions, policy environment and agroecological