Price and nonprice factors in a green revolution

Despite difficulties encountered by upland farmers, a Green Revolution, perhaps even a "double Green Revolution", is occurring in the Indonesian uplands. It remains largely unknown because it originates with the true entrepreneurs-farmers. Are relatively high yields sufficient to justify using the term Green Revolution to describe certain Indonesian upland areas such as those of Sulawesi? How do market and land policies interact? What might be the lessons for other upland regions? These are the complementary questions raised and tentatively answered through a short comparison of Sulawesi and Côte d'Ivoire farming systems. We test the hypothesis of a broad application of the Green Revolution concept to the uplands through various combinations of trees and inputs. We also enlarge the geographical framework and suggest that Green Revolutions of any sort may be on the way in the uplands of many countries. This looks like an irreversible trend under the influence of population increases, land saturation, ecological changes, and free markets. To better understand the continuous interaction between price and nonprice factors, we examine the reasons for intensive farming in Sulawesi compared with the more extensive farming and limited use of inputs in Côte d'Ivoire, at least until the mid-1990s. Pesticide use seems to have rapidly increased in some parts of Côte d'Ivoire beginning in the mid-1990s. The same can be said of fungicides in southwest Cameroon. In Côte d'Ivoire again, fertilizer consumption, for which statistics were largely unavailable until the mid-1990s, was burgeoning in 2001-02. A clear understanding of the reasons behind the surge of input consumption in Côte d'Ivoire may help to test the hypothesis of an ongoing Green Revolution in the uplands of many countries. (Résumé d'auteur)