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From Slash and Burn to Replanting : Green Revolutions in the Indonesian Uplands?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004) Ruf, François; Lançon, Frederic; Ruf, François; Lançon, Frederic
The most traditional and widely used farming systems in the humid upland tropics are based on fallowing and various forms of slash-and-burn agriculture. Their sustainability depends on the duration of the fallow; as long as the fallow stage is longer than seven or eight years, slash-and-burn systems usually remain efficient. They produce a moderate yield using a low-input technology that is especially efficient in terms of returns to labor. With a few exceptions, yield per hectare and labor returns decline when fallow duration drops below the threshold of seven or eight years. This decline can be interpreted as the loss of the "forest rent," one of the main concepts used in this study. Forest rent also applies to most perennials, which despite their name are often managed under a kind of shifting cultivation. As coffee, cocoa, and even rubber farms are sometimes abandoned to "fallow" and replanted later on, a tree crop system may well be considered as an extended form of shifting cultivation, hence the concept of tree crop shifting cultivation used in this study. If the coffee or cocoa farms are not abandoned for several years to enable a regrowth of a secondary forest, replanting is more difficult or more costly than initial planting. Yields and revenues can be expected to be lower. This decline of revenues and increase of costs matches the concept of the loss of forest rent.
Economic Growth, Poverty, and Household Welfare in Vietnam
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004) Glewwe, Paul; Agrawal, Nisha; Dollar, David; Glewwe, Paul; Agrawal, Nisha; Dollar, David
Viet Nam is an economic success story - it transformed itself from a country in the 1980s as one of the poorest in the world, to a country in the 1990s with one of the world's highest growth rates. With the adoption of a new market-oriented policies, Viet Nam averaged an economic growth rate of 8 percent per year from 1990 to 2000, a growth rate accompanied by a large reduction in poverty, stemming from significant increases in school enrollment, and a rapid decrease in child malnutrition. The book uses an unusually rich set of macroeconomic, and household survey data, to examine several topics: the causes of the economic turnaround, and prospects for future growth; the impact of economic growth on household welfare, as measured by consumption expenditures, health, education, and other socioeconomic indicators; and, the nature of poverty in Viet Nam, and the effectiveness of government policies, intended to reduce same. Although the country's past achievements are impressive, future progress is by no means ensured.