Economy of the Use of the Soil Inside Sea

7/28/2019 Economy of the Use of the Soil Inside Sea

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THE ECONOMY OF THE USE OF SOIL INSIDE SEA-SANTA ELENA AGREEMENT

We are going to apply and use the modern concept of soil resources in our SEA-Santa ElenaAgreement as a fundamental concern because land is an essential input in agriculture Ecuador, inthe sense that no output will be produced without its use. This is particularly true for Ecuador andmany other developing countries where non-labor inputs in agriculture are negligible andagricultural land is the critical resource and the basis for survival of the vast majority of the

population (Barbier, 2003). Agriculture in our country is not only an economic activity but also away of life. Thus, agricultural land is one of our cornerstone upon which the welfare of society isbuilt. In the process of using land in our project with energy crops. Our best intention for ourfarmers will not expose the land to any forms of degradation - physical, chemical, and biological.As a result, our crucial resource will not be under any continuous threat and its long-termproductive potential and it will not be impaired.

We are aware that in economic terms, land degradation causes a decline in the attributes of land inrelation to specific functions of value. In our project, we are considering energy crops from a globalperspective, without interfering or declining in our food production due to land degradation, or anyother factor, will not have a significant effect on food supply because of the potential substitutionfrom other producing areas as well to use intercropping system in the jatropha curcas cultivationsystems.

It is fact that land degradation may occur at any time in any geographical region of the planet (vander Leeuw et al., 2000). It is limited neither by space and time nor by a particular naturalcircumstance. However, specific types of land degradation problems and the level of severityexhibit considerable differences across various parts of the world. The economy of manydeveloping countries, including Ecuador, is heavily dependent on agriculture, and the livelihoods ofthe vast majority of their populations depend directly or indirectly on this sector. This dependenceon agriculture increases the vulnerability of the economy of these countries to problems related toland degradation. Consciously, we are taking special consideration to land degradation in ourenergy crops in developing agriculture inside our territory or biofuel corridor.

We are going to introduce new strategies for the future to be based first and foremost on theconservation and careful management of land, water, energy, and biological resources needed forfood production with the intercropping cultivation system among the jatropha curcas cultivationsystem. We are agreed that our stewardship of world resources must change and the basic needsof people must be balanced with those resources that sustain human life. The conservation ofthese resources will require coordinated efforts and incentives from our projects individuals and incoordination with Agricultural authorities in Ecuador, because once these finite resources areexhausted they cannot be replaced by human technology. Further, more efficient andenvironmentally sound agricultural technologies must be developed and put into practice tosupport the continued productivity of agriculture inside our biofuel corridor.

The solution is to apply an appropriate Natural Resources Management (NRM) in the lands thatcovers our territory and it refers to the sustainable utilization of major natural resources, such asland, water, air, minerals, forests, fisheries, and wild flora and fauna. Together, these resourcesprovide the ecosystem services that underpin human life. Our main perspective in the SEA-SantaElena Agreement is that NRM should contribute to poverty alleviation among the ruralcommunities, and that natural resources should be used in a sustainable manner to enhancehuman welfare. While poverty alleviation and sustainable NRM are generally compatible, andready and capable to manage difficult tradeoffs that may occur at times. Nevertheless the factremains that without poverty alleviation, the environment in Ecuador will continue to degrade, andwithout better NRM, poverty alleviation will be undermined.

NATURAL RESOURCES: THE FOUNDATION OF LIVELIHOODS FOR THE POOR

We strongly believe that Natural resources (NR) provide fundamental life support, in the form ofboth consumptive and public-good services. And that ecological processes maintain soil


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productivity, nutrient recycling, the cleansing of air and water, and climatic cycles. Soils are thefoundation of agriculture, which in turn is the basic building block in the livelihoods of all people. Atthe genetic level, diversity found in natural life-forms supports the breeding programs necessary toprotect and improve cultivated plants and domesticated animals. Wild flora and fauna form thebasis of traditional medicine and a significant part of the modern pharmacological industry,specially applied to jatropha curcas.

We will support the natural-resources foundation that is coming under increasing pressure fromboth increasing population and higher levels of per-capita economic activity. In this sense andaccording to World Bank Group during the period 1990 to 2030 the worlds population is likely togrow by 3.7 billion. Ninety percent of this increase will occur in developing countries. Over the nextfour decades Sub-Saharan Africas population is expected to rise from 500 million to 1.5 billion,Asias from 3.1 billion to 5.1 billion, and Latin Americas from 450 million to 750 million. Thedistribution of people between rural and urban areas has important implications for the types ofstress placed on the environment. In 1990 most people lived in rural areas, but by 2030 the urbanpopulation will be twice the size of the rural population. Developing country cities, as a group, areexpected to grow by 160 percent over this period, whereas rural populations will grow by only 10percent. Mega project like the Biofuel Corridor along the Peninsula of Santa Elena will convert thistrend into a big contribution to make to stay farmers in rural fields and attract other to come to workin energy crops fields where substantial investment to be carried out by international lenders.

While it is very difficult to forecast how per capita income will change in the next 30 years, it is quiteclear that the growing population aspires to a higher standard of living. This will often entail anaccelerated use of natural resources, both as inputs to the economy, and as recipients of waste.However, the relationship between economic growth and environmental stress is not a linear one,as growth also generates resources to better manage natural resources as we are going toestablish in the Biofuels Projects.

PROBLEM STATEMENT AND PURPOSE INSIDE SEA

Among the various forms of land degradation, soil erosion is the most important and an ominousthreat to the food security and development prospects of Ecuador and many other developingcountries. It induces on-site costs to individual farmers, and off-site costs to society. Due to thepresence of externalities arising from soil erosion, our biofuels market prices will reflect resourceproductivity and individual farmers will have sufficient incentives to practice soil conservingagricultural practices. Accelerated soil erosion will be reduced by a combination of proper landmanagement systems and appropriate soil and water conservation efforts in the Peninsula ofSanta Elena.

Incentives to promote soil and water conservation measures are, therefore, among appropriateareas of intervention to mitigate the adverse effects of erosion in our energy crops. Physical soilconservation structures technically of 50,000 hectares have the potential to reduce soil loss by

decreasing overland flow of water and to mitigate yield variability by reducing moisture stress onenergy crops growth through retention of rainwater that would otherwise be lost to runoff as it isnow in many areas of the Peninsula of Santa Elena. As a result of increasing awareness throughknowledge that soil erosion will be reduced yield and income and poses a threat to household foodsecurity. In our energy crop project, we will make substantial efforts will be directed towards findingappropriate soil and water conservation measures for low-income farmers with the intercropssystem with vegetables and tropical fruits among the 50,000 hectares of jatropha curcas cultivationsystems. Inside SEA-Santa Elena Agreement, we will use the economic argument to rationalizethese public and private investments in soil and water conservation in the 5 water dampconstructed by the Central Government during the last 20 years that it improves resourceallocating efficiency of market incentives for erosion control. An extension of Agricultural Universitywill operate inside SEA and to be financed by Etanolsa S.A. to study the needs for better

understanding of these factors, for the purpose of designing policy, thesis and programs thatpromote conservation behavior, necessitates socio-economic studies of soil and waterconservation.


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This could be explained by the fact that underlying the immediate biophysical causes of soilerosion are socio-economic factors that dictate whether farmers practice soil conserving or erosiveagricultural practices in our energy crops. In other words, socio-economic forces could constrainthe desirability and adoption of technical solutions inside the SEA-Santa Elena Agreement. Thepurpose of the thesis to be carry out by our Agriculture University Extension inside the BiofuelsCorridor, therefore, to analyze the socio-economic aspects ofsoil and water conservation (SWC)as it applies to subsistence farm households inside the Biofuel Corridor in the Peninsula of Santa

Elena covering 50,000 of energy crops, mainly sugarcane and jatropha curcas. The specificresearch questions for the thesis, and how these questions are addressed in the thesis, are givenbelow in developing energy crops.

1) Does soil and water conservation improve energy crop yield and farm income and/or reducefarmers exposure to risk due to variability in yield and income?2) What is the optimal path of investment in SWC in subsistence energy crop production?3) What are the socio-economic factors that influence farmers SWC decisions behavior in energycrops?4) What are the farmers perceived priority agricultural problems, preferred areas for developmentof energy crops intervention, and which factors affect the preference for alternative types ofintervention?

We are determinate in investment in SWC that results in a higher yield in the energy crops andfarm income and/or reduces farmers exposure to risk due to variability is made by applying astochastic dominance criterion in developing energy crops . A dynamic programming optimizationmodel will be employed to determine the optimal path of investment in SWC and the effect ofspecific factors on the optimal path. A multiple-choice decision model, multinomial logit, is used todetermine agro-ecological, socio-economic and institutional factors that influence farmers SWCdecisions in energy crops as 15% partner in our profits in this energy project producing alternativefuels. And finally, the agricultural problems and preferences for development intervention givenpriority by farmers are ranked, and factors influencing the preferences are determined using arandom utility model in developing energy crops.

Soil erosion, and consequently soil and water conservation, has both on-site and off-site effects.Only the on-site economic aspects are dealt with in this project. Soil conservation principles implylimiting both the detachment and transportation of soil particles from soil aggregates by erosiveagents. Types of conservation measures dealt with in this biofuels project are only those that canhelp to limit the transportation of detached soil particles by water.

In the University Extension to be placed inside our biofuel corridor will provide education mainlydirectly to the effect of soil erosion and hence of conservation as a slow process that requiressome lapse of time to be felt. This implies the need for an extended period of time for researchactivities to monitor the impacts, and to satisfy with available secondary data generated fromexperiments that will be neither designed nor organized in a way suitable for economic analysis.

Furthermore, the time series data from the Soil Conservation Research Project (SCRP) to beused in the studies and analysis will show some disruptions due to the security problems thatprevailed in the area during the period of the study. This will result permanently in the use ofestimates and proxies for some variables. The results, therefore, will need to be understood in thiscontext and can only be taken as indicative, rather than being considered as definitive.

STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS OF SOIL CONSERVATION AT UNIVERSITY EXTENSIONLEVEL

The thesis will be organized in six sections. In the following section (section two), economicaspects of soil erosion are discussed. Section three provides a brief account of soil erosion andconservation in Ecuador, particularly the territory of the Peninsula of Santa Elena. In section four,

literature in the area of economics of soil and water conservation will be reviewed. Summaries ofthe four articles annexed in this thesis will be presented in section five. Finally, the contributions ofthe thesis and suggestions for future research are discussed in the conclusions provided in sectionsix. The four articles are annexed to the thesis.


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ECONOMICS OF SOIL EROSIONSoil erosion is a two-phase process consisting of the detachment of individual particles from thesoil mass and their transport by erosive agents, such as water and wind. When sufficient energy isno longer available to transport the particles a third phase, deposition, occurs (Morgan, 1986). Theprinciple of soil conservation is, therefore, to limit the detachment and transportation of soilparticles by erosive agents. Soil erosion is a natural process that has taken and will always take

place. It even occurs on lands with grass or forest cover, and has been taking place long beforeagricultural civilization started (Brown, 1981). The normal rate of erosion under natural vegetationis, however, in approximate equilibrium with the rate of soil formation (Troeh et al., 1999).Problems arise when the natural process of soil erosion is accelerated due to human interventionsthat result in deviations from the equilibrium. Special care will be taken to maintain the correctequilibrium inside the Biofuel Corridor. Among the different human activities that accelerate soilerosion processes, agriculture is the most important and most soil erosion occurs on cultivatedlands (Hudson, 1986).

AVOIDING THE ACCELERATED DEPLETION OF NATURAL CAPITAL ASSETIn the SEA-Santa Elena Agreement we face with reality that Capital is a stock of real goods withthe potential to produce a flow of benefits or utilities in the future. Then, our natural capital, theBiofuel Corridor, covering more than 200,000 hectares, is our stock of goods derived directly fromnature that have the potential to contribute to the long-term economic production and welfare ofsociety inside our Biofuel Corridor. Like other natural capital, soil is a stock of goods deriveddirectly from nature that has the potential to contribute to the long-term economic productivity andwelfare of societies. The SEA counts with 50,000 hectares of fertile lands and soil as with financialcapital of US$1.5 Billion Dollars to install and construct 5 biorefineries and developing energycrops such as sugarcane and jatropha curcas at a rate of 10,000 hectares per plant, and a housingconstruction project units for 25,000 families inside our Corridor. This natural capital can bemeasured in stocks and flows, although in physical rather than monetary units. These naturalcapital stock and flow values is going to be converted into monetary units with application ofresource prices to the physical quantities of 500 Millions gallons of biofuels per year at an

averaging price of US$1.50 per gallon. The investment of US$1.5 Billions Dollars will be count asadded valued cost to the land and soil , this exercise of selling and exporting the biofuels is notgoing to be problematic due to the nature of our mature international biofuels markets that lead tostable and non distorted prices for the next 20 years.

Our natural capital stocks will be commonly divided into renewable and exhaustible categoriesbased on their capacity for reproduction and growth at a significant rate when viewed from our owneconomic time scale. Our renewable resources are capable of regenerating themselves, as long asthe environment in which they are nurtured is favorable as it is our case. Ecuador counts with thebest second vegetable layer in the world. We have to be alert and ready to face any upsets in thisnurturing environment that may lead to a loss of regeneration capacity and thus to deterioration ofthe resource quality of our lands and soils. In order to ensure sustainable production, the use of

renewable resources should not exceed the natural rate of regeneration.

In the SEA-Santa Elena Agreement the issue of whether agricultural soil is a renewable orexhaustible natural resource depends on our best resource management system to be employedin its use. Theoretically, topsoil could be considered as a renewable natural resource because itregenerates through the natural process of soil formation. As discussed by Dasgupta & Heal(1979), arable land is considered as a renewable resource so long as it is utilized carefully, andregenerates itself over the annual cycle. We are very conscious that any concerns will arise whenthe rate at which it is depleted or eroded through cultivation is faster than the rate at which itregenerates. We are also aware that our renewable natural resources could be transformed intothe category of exhaustible resources through mismanagement of them (Hartwick & Olewiler,1986; Howe, 1987 cited in Anderson & Thampapillai, 1990). We will establish such conditions

where the annual natural soil formation is largely exceeded by the annual soil loss to erosion, thesoil stock could be turned into a potentially exhaustible resource.


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Therefore, like other exhaustible natural resources, careful decisions on soil use and managementover time - in our project - are of paramount importance in order to maintain the productivecapacity of the soil. We know that when soil depletion occurs as a result of loss of soil nutrientsand organic materials, it may be replenished through the application of organic or inorganicsources of nutrients or appropriate agricultural practices inside our Biofuels Corridor. We will havethe best care because erosion reduces the topsoil and results in a loss of soil depth, which is anirreversible effect. This is because conservation efforts will only mitigate further soil loss, and

generally do not reverse the situation and will not restore the soil depth (LaFrance, 1992). Also withregard to nutrient loss, however, our soil will be used continually with replenishment, specially inpart of our semi-arid regions it will not gradually lead to desertification and loss of the productiveour natural capital stock.

Hence, our the farmers have vested interest in looking after their soil resource and managingerosion. We are going to provide that farmers have good information about the impact ofagricultural production decisions on land quality, and that agricultural input and output markets,including markets for land and credit, are competitive, soil erosion does not present anyenvironmental externalities. Others argue that on-site cost of soil erosion is an important socialconcern. This is because in most developing countries, like Ecuador case, where the problem ofsoil erosion is serious, there is a general lack of competitive market but with the biofuels domesticand international market it will work on the opposite conditions. Same thing happen with land andcredit markets are poorly developed and there is a poor information system, hence resulting infailure of market system to protect the land (Shortle & Abler, 1999). In our project, we are going toinvest around US$20,000 per agriculture land hectare, including 5 biorefineries and completedevelopment of 50,000 hectares with energy crops to resolve and overcome with these difficulties.

We will take special attention to be place on soil erosion that also causes air pollution andcontributes to the problem of global warming. World soils are important pools of active carbon andplay a major role in the global carbon cycle. Topsoil displaced from the terrestrial ecosystem due toerosion contains carbon. Part of this carbon content will be easily decomposed, mineralized andreleased into the atmosphere (Lal, 1995; Lal et al., 1995; Eswaran, 1995). Therefore, physical

displacement of soil through erosion processes from the terrestrial ecosystem results in a carbonflux into the atmosphere, adding to the problem of global warming. Estimates of the cost ofenvironmental damage caused by soil erosion are hard to come by. However, the scarcity ofdamage cost estimates of soil erosion on air, water bodies, biological communities, recreationalvalues, and other impacts does not imply that the impacts are small. The presence of off-site costsarising from soil erosion and other institutional problems apparent in developing countries result inmarket failures and affect farmers incentives for investment in land protecting activities. Theseeffects will be mitigated by investing with enough funds for damage costs in our land protectingactivities in parallel with the implementation and developing our energy crops.

MARKET FAILURE

International Biofuel market demanding our finished products such ethanol and biodiesel will beunder the assumption of a complete set of markets, with publicly known prices, and a perfectlycompetitive market, where every agent acts as a price taker, the competitive market outcome willbe Pareto optimal. Biofuel market failure will not occur because our market prices encouragepeople to produce, consume and invest in ways that are economically optimal for the individual andeconomically optimal for our and worldwide society as a whole to replace gradually alternativerenewable fuels such ethanol and biodiesel to replace gradually fossil nonrenewable fuels, i.e, ourfuel market prices not reflect scarcity of resources and hence lead to optimal alternative resourceuse.

The implication of this on soil resource management in developing energy crops in Ecuador is thatindividual farmers will have incentives to take into account the off-farm costs and/or benefits

generated due to their farm practices in land use decisions. Contrarily, the presence of marketfailure results in insufficient incentives for individual farmers to practice soil conserving agriculturalpractices and encourages further soil erosion and land degradation as is the general worldwidetrend. This leads to non-optimal resource allocation and utilization and necessitates government


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intervention to ensure resource allocate efficiency which do not happen in Ecuador, because weare bringing sufficient and enough new fresh private capital to finance our biofuel project. Marketfailures in developing countries such Ecuador case occur due to the presence of off-site costsarising from soil erosion, lack of information, risk and uncertainty, poor specification of propertyrights, poorly developed or non-existent credit and insurance markets, as well as other institutionalfactors (Kerr, 1998). Although the economic rationale for public investment in soil and waterconservation is that it improves resource allocative efficiency in the absence of market incentives

for erosion control as government has made in the Peninsula of Santa Elena with the constructionof 5 water damp with water distribution channels during the past 20 years.

LACK OF INFORMATION. In order for a market system to operate competitively and allocateresources efficiently, the role of information is crucial that is the main reason to establish anUniversity Agricultural extension. Consequently, students, teacher and professionals will help ourFarmers to evaluate and use information to make production and management decisions. As thisapplies to soil and water conservation, the long-term period over which the effect of soil use andmanagement decisions on productivity takes place implies the need for information on the future.When there is a lack of information, the long-term impact on productivity of soil erosion processesmay not be known and this will delay farmers from taking informed decisions about soil and waterconservation. In many developing countries such Ecuador access to such information to farmers isoften limited.

PROPERTY RIGHTS. Soil conservation, from an economic perspective, implies saving soils forfuture use, i.e., redistribution of soil use rate into the future through participation of farmers,workers and employees in the Biofuels Project to be developed along the SEA-Santa ElenaAgreement. Soil depletion by erosive agricultural practices, on the other hand, implies redistributionof soil use rate to the present (Barbier, 2003). We are going to establish good specification ofproperty rights and tenure security over important assets such as land, because communityfarmers are more likely to have short planning horizons in developing our energy crops, so thatlong-term effects of erosion on productivity will have less influence on land use decisions.Therefore, we will direct them to employ non-erosive agricultural practices that will not deplete

more soil at the present at the expense of the future. In addition, the most reliable indicator that afarming household can have of the effect of soil erosion on future land productivity is through landprice. We will invest around US$20,000 per hectare totaling US$1 Billion Dollars in 50,000hectares.

CREDIT MARKET. We know that Farmers will adopt profitable soil and water conservationmeasures if they have sufficient funds of their own or if they have access to credit as we are goingto provide in our project at a rate of US$1,500.00 to cultivate energy crops per hectare. We aregoing to make the high initial investment and maintenance cost of structures because they do nothave funds for this important infrastructure works. In our project, the farmers will have access tocredit creating incentive for investment in soil and water conservation. Credits from SEA-SantaElena Agreement will be accessible to subsistence farmers with a 15% participation in the project

to be used as collaterals, particularly in our case inside the Biofuel Corridor. Credits from EtanolsaS.A. will be at a low rate and on a long-term basis for infrastructure works that encouragesinvestment in soil and water conservation from which returns are expected over the long-term.Therefore, with appropriate technologies that will be available for soil conservation, our farmerswill adopt them where there is such a availability of credit market inside the Biofuel Corridor.

RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES. The fact that most farmers, whether they farm in the developed ordeveloping world, are averse to risk is generally accepted and well documented (Anderson &Thaampapillai, 1990). Our farmers will not be particularly worrying for subsistence farmers in ourproject because they will operating at a fairly economic survival and general welfare. We are goingto limit risks and uncertainties in soil and water conservation which arise from insecure land tenureand lack of information on future markets and performances of alternative land use systems. Even

if farmers have complete information, uncertainties about the appropriate type of conservationpractice and the optimal level of investment introduce elements of risk that curtail investment.Through the general availability of rural credit and insurance markets inside our territory will


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deplete any aggravates the effect of risks and uncertainties on soil and water conservationdecisions.

SOIL EROSION RESEARCH IN OUR FUTURE AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY EXTENSION

Our New University Extension to be established inside our territory will carry out scientific research

undertakings in soil erosion and related problems to face with success in the near future inEcuador all these important issues. The focus of soil research activities undertaken in research byour institutions will be on the physical, chemical, biological and agronomic properties of soil withoutmuch reference to the effect of erosion on these properties and the threat posed on soilproductivity from soil erosion. The first systematic and institutionalized research effort will be madeby the creation ofSoil Conservation Research Project (SCRP) that will initiate around 2014. ThisSCRP, will be finance by us and we will look for support by the European and Americangovernments in collaboration with the Ecuadorian Ministry of Agriculture to carry out this projectsuccessfully.

The SCRP research program will start after the massive campaign of soil conservation, supportedby the our energy crop program, that will already underway in 2014. However, it will be expected togenerate data on the extent of the problems, to identify potential measures for improving thesituation in the Peninsula of Santa Elena, to provide the conservation efforts with necessary basicdata for proper implementation, and to evaluate their efficiency and the possibilities forimprovement that help decision-makers at different levels. However, economic considerations willplay an important role in the analysis of soil erosion and conservation problems. We are going toquantifying and valuing many of the costs and benefits associated with soil conservation, coupledwith a feeling that economic considerations are less significant than other factors in understandingand solving erosion problems (Keddeman, 1989). In the years following its establishment, theproject established research sites in different parts of the Peninsula of Santa Elena.

DECISION BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS IN OUR BIOFUEL PROJECT

For decades it has been believed that technological innovations combined with scientific methodswere the answer to erosion problems. As discussed by Lovejoy and Napier (1986), conservationproblems, like other social concerns, have frequently been approached from the perspective of atechnological fix, based on the position that technology will generate solutions for all and anyproblems. However, regardless of advances in the development and promotion of technologies,the soil erosion problem persisted, forcing changes in attitudes to the way to tackle the problem.This led to the realization that soil conservation is not only a technical problem but also a socio-economic problem, which directed attention to socio-economic and behavioral factors influencingsoil conservation decision-making as we have done in our project. This shift in focus is evidentfrom the ever-increasing literature on factors affecting adoption of SWC technology in recentdecades.

We have done a good educational approach and the results is that our farmers SWC decisionbehavior succeeded in highlighting our energy crops project. We have overcame the complexityfrom the different location-specific nature of the problem and the diversity of farmerscircumstances that make it difficult to draw some reasonable generalization. We faced thesedifferences spring from the variation in agro-ecological, socio-economic and institutional factorsamong regions, villages, farms, and even plots. The most commonly used econometric models inadoption studies are the limited dependent variable models such as logit and probit. For thispurpose, both probity and legit analyses are well-established approaches in studies focusing onthe adoption of technology (Burton etal., 1999) as is our case to develop energy crops to producebiofuels at a larger scale. The choice of whether to use a probit or logit model, both widely used ineconomics, is a matter of computational convenience (Greene, 1997). The main assumption

underlying such discrete choice theory is that consumers rationally choose from a number ofalternatives and pick the one that yields the highest utility level as is the case inside our territory.Unlike consumer theory, where a demand function can be driven from a utility maximization


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also help in assisting SWC policy decisions and identifying potential future research areas in thePeninsula of Santa Elena.

Another area for research and development in understanding specific farm circumstances isincentive mechanisms to promote afforestation in order to combat land degradation. It is generallyaccepted that deforestation, that exposes the soil surface to various agents of erosion, isresponsible for accelerated soil erosion and land degradation problems in many developing

countries, including Ecuador. Although deforestation unquestionably contributes to landdegradation, there is a general lack of quantified research information to show the magnitude ofthe effect in order to trigger policy interventions that foster its contribution to soil conservation andother ecological services. As a result, its contribution to the national economy is underestimated,and resource allocation for research and development in the sector is limited. The success ofprevious efforts in afforestation of communal lands and introduction of agro-forestry practices hasbeen limited due to lack of knowledge of appropriate incentive mechanisms to trigger adoption byfarmers and also lack of funds. Therefore, research to evaluate the soil conserving effect and otherservices of forests to the household and national economy, as well as the incentive mechanismsfor farmers to promote afforestation, is another area for research and development in Ecuador andto be carry out by our future Agriculture Extension inside our territory.

Today, more than ever, it is understood that technical solutions alone are not a remedy for theproblem of soil erosion. Socio-economic and institutional factors operating from the level of thefarm through the national and regional level also play an important role in determining the successof technical solutions. Studies in social science also strongly depend on knowledge and findingsfrom the soil biophysical and agronomic fields. Therefore, a comprehensive solution to the problemrequires intra-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary cooperation between institutions and alsoresearchers and development workers from all fields directly or indirectly related to agriculture andsoil use as we are going to apply and established inside our Biofuel Corridor.

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Economy of the Use of the Soil Inside Sea