Brazil's chocolate forest: Environmental and economic roles of conservation in Bahia's cocoa agroecosystem

In the state of Bahia, Brazil many highly endangered tree and other species are being conserved on traditional farms where cocoa is cultivated under a dense shade canopy retained from the Atlantic Rainforest. Today this "chocolate forest" has taken on the new and unintended role of forest preserver despite a 1967-86 government program to raise cocoa production through the drastic removal of shade trees. An apparent majority of farmers either actively avoided the program or participated only partially.;Although denser shade reduces cocoa yield over the near-term, it provides several agroecological benefits: control of insect pests and weeds, micro-climate stability, and soil fertility maintenance. Brazil's shade removal program, advanced through tight control of credit, was designed to maximize production by using low-shade plus fertilizer while substituting agrochemicals for many beneficial roles of the overheadtrees.;By examining farms with a wide range of shading, under similar climate and soil characteristics, this research revealed that the shade levels utilized are simultaneously linked to: farmers' perceptions of the environmental and economic functions of the overhead trees, and individual willingness to entertain the perceived economic risk of using low-shade.;An economic model of net return verified that using dense shade is a risk-management strategy adapted to both the natural environment and the historically volatile cocoa market price. Whereas low-shade was economically superior with the high cocoa prices during the shade removal program, the dense-shade agroecosystem performed better under several historic low price periods. An intermediate and still profitable approach of using fertilizer with the traditional dense-shade agroecosystem was a rational and apparently widespread choice.;Although the studied farms using low shade have not shown significant changes in soil fertility to date, some declines in productivity are evident. The dense-shade farms continue to show good productivity, although the entire region is now threatened with a new disease outbreak.;Agroforestry systems, like cocoa, are suggested for tropical development because of their suitability to soil and climatic constraints. This research demonstrated that non-biophysical factors of market uncertainty and perceptions of technological dependency are important conditioners of farmer decision making and the resulting agroecosystem structure.