Agro-biodiversity as natural insurance and the development of financial insurance markets
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
Authors
Farmers traditionally grow a variety of crops in order to decrease the adverse impact of uncertain environmental and market conditions. That is, they use agro-biodiversity as a form of natural income insurance. In this chapter, we study how risk-averse farmers manage their portfolio of agro-biodiversity to hedge their income risk from uncertain environmental conditions, and how this management decision is being affected by the availability of financial insurance. Obviously, the two options-natural insurance through agrobiodiversity and financial insurance from the market-are substitutes for risk-averse farmers (Baumgärtner 2007). So, the price of financial insurance has an impact on the level of agro-biodiversity cultivated on the farm for riskmanagement purposes: as financial insurance becomes cheaper, it drives out agro-biodiversity as a form of natural insurance.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Agrobiodiversity conservation and economic development |
Editors | Andreas Kontoleon, Unai Pascual, Melinda Smale |
Number of pages | 25 |
Place of Publication | Abingdon |
Publisher | Routledge Taylor & Francis Group |
Publication date | 06.10.2008 |
Pages | 293-317 |
ISBN (print) | 9780415619769, 9780415465052 |
ISBN (electronic) | 9780203890127 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 06.10.2008 |
- Sustainability sciences, Management & Economics
- Economics