Explaining Agricultural Land Use in Villages surrounding the Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper examines the causes of agricultural land expansion using an analytical Chayanovian model. We estimate the model empirically for the Lore Lindu area. The results show a high elasticity of cultivated area with respect to population. Improved technologies, favourable natural characteristics and lower transaction costs have a direct negative and an indirect positive effect on agricultural land expansion. The direct effect is likely to dominate in the short run when population is fixed and labour markets are imperfect while the indirect effect relates more to the long run with labour being more mobile between sectors due to migration. Keywords: Land use change, deforestation, agricultural land expansion, land use modelling, village survey, GIS data, Indonesia.