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The Wet and the Dry; Irrigation and Agricultural Intensification in Polynesia. Patrick Vinton Kirch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 385 pp.From Upland to Irrigated Rice: The Development of Wet‐ Rice Agriculture in Rejang Musi, Southwest‐Sumatra, Jürg Schneider. Berlin: Reimer, 1995. 214 pp.

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). Incipient REDD+ forest carbon policies in a number of countries propose agricultural intensification measures to replace extensive "slash-and-burn" farming systems. These may result in conservation in some contexts, but will also increase future agricultural land rents as productivity increases, creating new incentives for agricultural expansion and deforestation. While robust governance can help to ensure land sparing, we propose that conservation incentives will also have to increase over time, tracking future agricultural land rents, which might lead to runaway conservation costs. We present a conceptual framework that depicts these relationships, supported by an illustrative model of the intensification of key crops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a leading REDD+ country. A von Thünen land rent model is combined with geographic information systems mapping to demonstrate how agricultural intensification could influence future conservation costs. Once postintensification agricultural land rents are considered, the cost of reducing forest sector emissions could significantly exceed current and projected carbon credit prices. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering escalating conservation costs from agricultural intensification when designing conservation initiatives.

To meet the growing demand for food in the Global South in a sustainable manner, current funding in innovation for sustainable agriculture intensification will need to be increased exponentially. New financing instruments will play an important role in increasing the overall funding for sustainable agriculture. Not only are current levels of funding inadequate, but also many existing investment instruments are not designed to cater to the high-risk potential and below market-rate return of agricultural funding and solve for market failures in specific sub-sectors or technologies. Thus, only large funders such as governments or institutional private investors make up the bulk of the funding towards agricultural innovation and SAI. While philanthropic funding from large multilaterals and bilaterals has the potential to fill the gap, grant and traditional debt finance does not provide a long-term sustainable solution to fund agricultural innovation. Hence, to fill the funding gap, new financing instruments are required that can attract mainstream investors at scale and fund a wider range of agricultural innovation enterprises and institutions.

As the world's population increases by almost 100 million
people each year during the next two to three decades-the largest annual
population increase in history- agricultural intensification, i.e.
production of more food on land already being cultivated, is a must.
There is little scope for increasing cultivated land in Asia, North
Africa, and Central America, while in Sub-Saharan Africa and South
America, physical and technological constraints are likely to restrain
large-scale conversion of potentially cultivable land [Dram and Hojjati
(1994)]. Agricultural intensification is already the main source of
increased food production. I Intensive use of chemical fertilizers,
pesticides, and irrigation technology, in combination with
higher-yielding crop varieties, has led to enough food being produced in
the world such that if it were evenly distributed, no one would go
hungry. Global food production per capita increased from about 260
kilograms (kgs) in 1950 to about 350 kgs in the early 1990s [FAD
(1992)]. In developing countries the corresponding increase was from 170
kgs to 250 kgs.

This paper examines agricultural intensification and its impact on deforestation in a frontier region of the Philippines. Panel data covering the period 1994–2000 are used to study labor demand and resource reallocation in response to lowland irrigation development. Results illustrate how irrigation has led to changes in employment, incomes, and activities at the forest margin. Findings indicate that the off-farm employment opportunities created by irrigation development have helped to reduce rates of forest clearing. Although some initial employment gains have been reversed, wage-induced increases in agricultural productivity in the uplands have reduced forest pressure. Results show that lowland irrigation has had direct, indirect, and lagged effects on rates of forest clearing, and that a virtuous cycle may be at play, with irrigation leading to both poverty reduction and reduced forest pressure.

AbstractThis article describes the intensification process of agriculture and its environmental limits regarding soil fertility in the rural community of Fonsagrada, in the inner region of Galicia in northwestern Spain. It addresses changes in land use, crops, and agricultural productivity between 1750 and 1890, framed within the theory of social metabolism and based on the method of nutrient balances. That technique measures nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium flows across the landscape within a given agro-ecosystem to assess its biophysical functioning and to detect environmental constraints related to management. The intensification of cropland resulted in net losses of potassium in outlying rough grazing land and hay meadows that served as the sources of cropland nutrients. Agricultural intensification was possible due to the close stabling of livestock, which allowed for more manure availability. Doing so, however, deprived pastureland of nutrient recover through manure deposition, which created a metabolic rift in the agro-ecosystem.