Examples of Variations in the Opportunity Cost of Time: Farmers whose time is especially
valuable tend to be those with significant off-farm sources of income. A good example found in
almost every village is the part-time farmer who obtains most of his income from an office job.
Many part-time farmers in Aurepalle earn their living primarily from tapping palm wine or
herding animals. Investment in soil conservation on dryland appears to be lower near large towns
and cities than in more remote areas, because employment in the towns gives higher returns than
working on soil conservation. Seasonal migrants have a high opportunity cost of time in the slack
season, when most farmers do soil conservation work. Investment is relatively low in villages
with high seasonal migration; this has also been found to be a major constraint to investment in
West Africa (Reards et al, 1992; Reij, 1991). All of these categories of people earn more from
their alternative employment than they could if they were full-time farmers caring for their land.
As a result, their fields tend to be more degraded than those of full time farmers.14

Other farmers, such as large landowners who employ regular farm workers or long-term
labourers, have a low opportunity cost of time. Their employees are paid by the season, and are
available to the employer on a daily basis at zero marginal cost. Therefore during slack times these
farmers can have their regular labourers do soil conservation work. It is profitable even if the
returns are quite low.

A similar case is that of farmers who simply refuse to enter the daily labour market, even when
they have little other productive work to do. Investigators found that in Aurepalle many people,
including poor but high caste people, prefer to do self-employed work than join the daily labour
market, even if the returns are lower. We must examine this further.

The finding that investment in soil and water conservation falls as the opportunity cost of labour
rises has troubling implications. It suggests that development and sustainability objectives work
against each other. Upwardly mobile people those with off-farm income and those who have
found better work in the city do not take good care of their land, and they do not appear to find
it profitable to hire others to do the work for them. However, these people are the success stories
of development, as diversification of village economies is crucial to their growth. Ways must be
sought to support such progress without neglecting the land.


Hypothesis 3: Access to Resources

Farmers often say they do not conserve soil because they lack the resources to do so. These
resources include labour, bullock or tractor power (to transport materials), or the cash to hire them.
Farmers without labour and bullock power must hire them at the market rate, which may exceed
the returns to soil conservation. Farmers who have their own bullock and labour power, on the
other hand, can utilize them when their cost is below the market rate, making soil conservation
work less expensive.1

Field observations have revealed that when farmers say they cannot undertake SWC, we need to
be certain whether they mean (1) soil conservation is profitable but they are constrained from
investing because they lack access to credit, or (2) soil conservation is simply not profitable.
Some conservation investments, such as gully control in hilly areas, appear to give positive profits


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