TY - JOUR

T1 - Wild harvesting or cultivation of commercial environmental products

T2 - A theoretical model and its application to medicinal plants

AU - Madsen, Sofia Topcu

AU - Smith-Hall, Carsten

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - On average, environmental income accounts for more than a quarter of rural household income in tropical and sub-tropical countries. One way to increase incomes from wild-harvested products is cultivation. In a landmark paper, Homma (1992) identified four phases describing the economic dynamics of environmental product cultivation, emphasising product scarcity. We reviewed literature that applied and/or discussed Homma's model. This suggested that additional factors, beyond resource scarcity, induce the transition to cultivation. We propose an alternative model of the dynamics of environmental product cultivation pathways, emphasising stock size, contextual, harvester, and mediating factors. The model has four possible product-level outcomes: scarcity induced cultivation, economic extinction, abundance with cultivation, and continued sole wild harvesting. We investigated this model empirically through the case of commercial medicinal plant harvesting in Nepal, using harvester interviews (n = 362) and published monthly price data for the most commonly traded products (n = 12) during a nine-year period. We found evidence of all four possible product-level outcomes, with “abundance with cultivation” being the most common. This supports that scarcity is not sufficient to explain cultivation processes; harvester decision-making processes and contextual and mediating factors must also be assessed.

AB - On average, environmental income accounts for more than a quarter of rural household income in tropical and sub-tropical countries. One way to increase incomes from wild-harvested products is cultivation. In a landmark paper, Homma (1992) identified four phases describing the economic dynamics of environmental product cultivation, emphasising product scarcity. We reviewed literature that applied and/or discussed Homma's model. This suggested that additional factors, beyond resource scarcity, induce the transition to cultivation. We propose an alternative model of the dynamics of environmental product cultivation pathways, emphasising stock size, contextual, harvester, and mediating factors. The model has four possible product-level outcomes: scarcity induced cultivation, economic extinction, abundance with cultivation, and continued sole wild harvesting. We investigated this model empirically through the case of commercial medicinal plant harvesting in Nepal, using harvester interviews (n = 362) and published monthly price data for the most commonly traded products (n = 12) during a nine-year period. We found evidence of all four possible product-level outcomes, with “abundance with cultivation” being the most common. This supports that scarcity is not sufficient to explain cultivation processes; harvester decision-making processes and contextual and mediating factors must also be assessed.

KW - Domestication

KW - Economic dynamics

KW - Extraction

KW - Nepal

KW - Non-timber forest products

KW - Price development

U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107701

DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107701

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85143911562

VL - 205

JO - Ecological Economics

JF - Ecological Economics

SN - 0921-8009

M1 - 107701

ER -