Biodiversity and socioeconomic impacts of selected agro-commodity production systems

Abstract

This study assesses the socioeconomic and biodiversity impacts associated with the production of selected agro-commodities in their production countries and areas. Selected agro-commodities are soy (in Argentina and Brazil), palm oil (in Indonesia and Malaysia), beef (in Argentina and Brazil), and coffee (in Honduras and Vietnam). In each of the countries specific production areas and regions were selected, where production of the agro-commodity has shown strong expansion during the last 5 to 8 years.

Using data and information on biodiversity and socioeconomic indicators available at the subnational level, a loss of biodiversity as well as a decline of critical socioeconomic indicators was observed in 54% of the studied production areas. Because in the mid-1990s several production areas had lower values for important socioeconomic indicators compared to the national average, a widening of the gap between the socioeconomic situation in production areas as compared to the national average was found in 26% of the cases studied. This corresponds to 59% of areas with a poor initial development situation.

We found that factors explaining these patterns are characteristics of the commodities, macroeconomic and governance issues of the countries, as well as the history of the production area and whether production increase occurs through frontier expansion or intensification. Overall these results contradict the neoliberal assumption that export-oriented development will generally stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty in the production areas.