Oil Palm Adoption, Household Welfare, and Nutrition Among Smallholder Farmers in Indonesia
By M. Euler, V. Krishna, S. Schwarze, Hermanto Siregar, M. Qaim. 2017
208 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Oil palm is one of the most rapidly expanding crops throughout the humid tropics. In Indonesia, the expansion is largely driven by smallholder farmers. While recent research has studied effects for the environment and climate change, socioeconomic impacts in the small farm sector have hardly been analyzed. Here, we address this research gap by analyzing effects of oil palm adoption on farm household living standards and nutrition in Sumatra. Using survey data and econometric models, we estimate average impacts, impact pathways, and impact heterogeneity. Results show that oil palm adoption improves household living standards and nutrition. Mean impacts on food and non-food expenditures, as well as on calorie consumption and dietary quality, are all positive and significant. A sizeable part of the total effects is attributable to oil palm adopters expanding their farm size rather than realizing higher profits per hectare. Oil palm has lower labor requirements than alternative crops (especially rubber), so that adopting farmers are able to manage larger land areas. Labor saved through switching from rubber to oil palm is also used to increase off-farm incomes. Impact heterogeneity is analyzed with quantile regressions. We find positive effects of oil palm adoption across the entire expenditure distribution. However, the absolute gains in total expenditures and non-food expenditures are larger for the better-off, suggesting that oil palm may contribute to rising inequality.
Subfields: Ecology, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/017ef08079591ee97a6aba7e9664c7ccf2499cbe
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Ecology
- Kibrom T. Sibhatu
- M. Qaim
- I. Grass
- Hermanto Siregar
- V. Krishna
- C. Kubitza
- Zulkifli Alamsyah
- Kira Urban
In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- M. Qaim
- Kibrom T. Sibhatu
- V. Krishna
- Hermanto Siregar
- Glenn Stone
- Theda Gödecke
- Arjunan Subramanian
- S. Ogutu
In Global and Planetary Change
- Kibrom T. Sibhatu
- M. Qaim
- I. Grass
- Hermanto Siregar
- V. Krishna
- C. Kubitza
- Zulkifli Alamsyah
- Kira Urban
Citations in the corpus
- Farm production diversity and dietary quality: linkages and measurement issues (2018, methodology): “We planned and conducted all three surveys in 2012 for different research projects (Euler et al. 2017; Chege et al. 2015; Chiputwa and Qaim 2016).”
- Land property rights, agricultural intensification, and deforestation in Indonesia (2018, methodology): “First, in Indonesia the role of smallholders in cultivating plantation crops, such as oil palm and rubber, continues to grow (Euler et al., 2017).”
- Environmental, Economic, and Social Consequences of the Oil Palm Boom (2020, background): “Review of the Diversity of Palm Oil Production Systems in Indonesia: Case Study of Two Provinces, Riau and Jambi.”