Effects of shade and input management on economic performance of small-scale Peruvian coffee systems
Open accessAbstract
Tropical agroforestry systems provide a number of ecosystem services that might help sustain the production of multiple crops, improve farmers' livelihoods and conserve biodiversity. A major drawback of agroforestry coffee systems is the perceived lower economic performance compared to high-input monoculture coffee systems, which is driving worldwide intensification practices of coffee systems. However, comprehensive cost-benefit analyses of small-scale coffee plantations are scarce. Consequently, there is a need to improve our understanding of the economic performance of coffee systems under different shade and input management practices. We provide a comprehensive economic analysis of Arabica coffee farming practices where we compare productivity, costs, net income and benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 162 small-scale, Peruvian coffee plantations under different shade and input management practices along an elevation gradient. By using a cluster analysis, three shade and three input classes (low, medium and high) were defined. We found similar economic performance for all shade classes, but reduced net income and BCR in the High-Input class. More specifically, there was no difference in net income or BCR between low, medium and high shade classes. The High-Input class had significantly lower net income and BCR, mainly due to increased costs of (hired) labour, land, and fertilizer and fungicides; costs which were not fully compensated for by higher coffee yields. Coffee yield decreased with elevation, whereas gate coffee price and quality, as well as shade levels, increased with elevation. Additional revenues from timber could increase farmers' income and overall economic performance of shaded plantations in the future. Our analysis provides evidence that for small-scale coffee production, agroforestry systems perform equally well or better than unshaded plantations with high input levels, reinforcing the theory that good economic performance can coincide with conservation of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Additional comprehensive and transparent economic analyses for other geographic regions are needed to be able to draw generalizable conclusions for smallholder coffee farming worldwide. We advise that future economic performance studies simultaneously address the effects of shade and input management on economic performance indicators and take biophysical variation into account.
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Crop yield is not a comprehensive indicator of farm economic benefits, as operational costs, investment costs, market price and subsidies also have a significant influence on farm profitability.
“Crop yield, however, is not a comprehensive indicator of farm economic benefits, as operational costs, investment costs, market price and subsidies also have a significant influence on farm profitability (Jezeer et al., 2018(Jezeer et al., , 2017;;Sgroi et al., 2015).”
From Almond farm profitability under agroecological management in south-eastern Spain: Accounting for externalities and opportunity costs (2020) · cites this paper as Jezeer et al., 2018
The Introduction and §4.3 (Costs) say yield alone is not a sufficient indicator of economic performance. The paper also accounts for production and investment costs and coffee prices (§2.3 and Table 1). The passages do not address subsidies, so the claim that subsidies significantly influence profitability is not supported by this source. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Jezeer, R. E., Santos, M. J., Boot, R. G. A., Junginger, M., & Verweij, P. A.
- Affiliations
- Utrecht University (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Jezeer, Rosalien E.
- Venue
- Agricultural Systems
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-05
- Volume
- 162
- Pages
- 179-190
- ISSN
- 0308-521X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2789981683
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 10
- FWCI
- 19.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Agricultural Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Forestry › Agroforestry and silvopastoral systems
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Agricultural economics and policies
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Chemistry › Sustainable Agricultural Systems Analysis
- Keywords
- coffee agroforestry, shade management, input management, smallholder coffee farming, economic performance, benefit-cost ratio, net income, elevation gradient, Coffea arabica, coffee yield, fertilizer costs, labor costs, timber revenue, ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation
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