Sustainable agricultural technology on smaller scale farms

The purpose of the project is to evaluate the potential for the adoption of a fallow enrichment strategy for a sustainable agricultural technology on smaller scale farms within Costa Rica in the context of the availability of on farm resources and current economic policy. The sustainable agricultural technology is frijol tapado that is a cost effective, slash/mulch technique for producing beans, an important subsistence crop, in resource constrained, smaller scale farms on steeply sloped, marginal quality l and. The enrichment strategy is alley cropping locally available leguminous trees within the frijol tapado plots to provide the benefits of soil stabilization on steep slopes to prevent erosion and the addition of nitrogen, an essential plant nutrient, to the soil. Fallow is used to regenerate fertility within the tapado system. Allowing land to remain idle for two to three years, the normal time for tapado fallow, is problematic because of rising land use pressure being driven by increasing economic pressures. Enrichment allows the fallow time to be reduced without diminishing soil fertility. Current policy is promoting the use of tapado as a subsistence production technique for beans because of the decreased support for basic grains production. Beans are now a difficult cash crop to grow in Costa Rica because of the lack of credit, technical assistance, and government purchases at subsidized prices. At the current time no policies exist to promote agroforestry with subsistence crops. The resources that previously supported basic grains production are now being used to produce agricultural exports and to support the commercial and industrial sector of the economy. The resources were shifted away from domestic grains production because the same items could be imported at a lower cost than cultivated domestically. The policy implications are reduced domestic production and increased importation from foreign sources.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	107291 Pérez, A.C., 132620 York, J., 127718 Vartanián, D., 12822 International Society for Ecological Economics, Washington, DC (EUA), 20110 Universidad Nacional, Heredia (Costa Rica), IICA, San José (Costa Rica) 14, 6056 Consejo de la Tierra, San José (Costa Rica), 3. Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Ecological Economics San José (Costa Rica) 24-28 Oct 1994
Format:	biblioteca
Published:	San José (Costa Rica) 1994
Subjects:	SOSTENIBILIDAD, EXPLOTACION EN PEQUEÑA ESCALA, AGRICULTURA ALTERNATIVA, CULTIVO EN CALLEJONES, FRIJOL TAPADO, TERRENO EN DECLIVE, COSTA RICA,
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