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Abstract
The aims of our paper are to identify economic determinants of the
on-farm cultivars diversity and to empirically characterize the farmers'
diversification choices. We focus on the private decision making process
involving the choice of rice cultivars and the corresponding allocation of
farmland. For a specific crop, the choice of cultivars, and the resulting cultivars portfolio, involves the farmer comparing benefits and costs. Among
the many costs involved, we focus on diversity's management costs. Our
results rely on original data collected during the spring 2009 in the study
area, and involve a sample of 86 economic units growing rice. We estimated a count data model, in which the endogeneous variable is the
number of cultivars grown on the farm. After that, we studied the factors
explaining the portfolio choice in terms of commercial rice grain, and the
on-farm repartition between these different types. A multinomial logit
model was used, with three alternatives, be specialized into a particular
type of rice grain (long or round), or grow simultaneously these two types,
or finally be diversified with niche market varieties. And finally we estimated the percentage of long rice compared to the percentage of round
rice with a linear regression model. The results confirm the importance
of the interactions between market related benefit and the management
constraints on land and labor.