ABSTRACT
Over the past decade or so, detailed studies by applied economists have documented the fact that despite the pressures of agricultural industrialization, farmers persist in growing diverse crops and cultivars simultaneouslyespecially, but not exclusively, in developing economies (Brush et al., 1992; Meng 1997; Van Dusen 2000; Birol 2004; Di Falco 2003; Gauchan 2004). Most of these studies confirm the expected negative association between the development of market infrastructure and crop biodiversity on individual farms, advanced earlier by anthropologists, ethnobotanists and conservationists. When more specific hypotheses about the relationship of input and output markets with crop biodiversity on farms have been tested, however, some ambiguities are apparent (Benin et al. 2004; Nagarajan et al., 2005). One reason for ambiguity is the difficulty of establishing the causality of the relationship between crop biodiversity on farms and the participation of farmers in markets with cross-sectional data. Unfortunately, this causality is the crux of conservation policy for countries in the process of economic development. Is it because farmers are left out of markets that diversity is conserved? Can markets be used as a means of supporting on-farm diversity, and if so, in what way?
