IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/midasp/268951.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Overview of Bean Production Practices, Varietal Preferences, and Consumption Patterns in the Milpa System of the Guatemalan Highlands: Results of a Farm Household Survey

Author

Listed:
  • DeYoung, David J.
  • Reyes, Byron
  • Osorno, Juan
  • Mejia, Gustavo
  • Villatoro, Julio Cesar
  • Maredia, Mywish K.

Abstract

The study of climbing bean farmers in five departments of the Altiplano region (a.k.a. western highlands) of Guatemala confirms the importance of beans as a crop for own consumption in the study area. On average, households planted 0.4 hectares with beans in the study region. Beans, planted as part of the traditional intercropped system called Milpa, are most commonly planted simultaneously (or directly) with corn, while relay (Milpa-relevo) was a second common planting method in the study area. In terms of area planted, most farmers ranked beans as either the first or second most important crop. The majority of farmers do not sell harvested grain. Indeed, for 47% of households, their own bean production is sufficient to cover 6 months or less of annual household bean consumption; beyond which they rely on purchased beans to fill their consumption needs. Bean consumption among households in this region is the highest soon after harvest (often between October and January) and lowest in July, August and September. The study confirms that men and women farmers have slightly different preferences for bean seed varietal traits and women are willing to pay $0.16 more for bean seed of varieties with their preferred traits than men. On average, farmers indicated they are willing to pay only a 10% premium for bean seed of a preferred variety over the price of grain. Thus, any efforts to increase the use of new improved varieties of beans to promote productivity growth in this region will need to be based on subsidized seed dissemination efforts to make the seeds affordable by smallholder farmers in the western highlands of Guatemala.

Suggested Citation

  • DeYoung, David J. & Reyes, Byron & Osorno, Juan & Mejia, Gustavo & Villatoro, Julio Cesar & Maredia, Mywish K., 2017. "An Overview of Bean Production Practices, Varietal Preferences, and Consumption Patterns in the Milpa System of the Guatemalan Highlands: Results of a Farm Household Survey," Staff Paper Series 268951, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:midasp:268951
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.268951
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/268951/files/DeYoung%20et%20al%20Staff%20Paper%202017-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/268951/files/DeYoung%20et%20al%20Staff%20Paper%202017-08.pdf?subformat=pdfa
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.268951?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:midasp:268951. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/damsuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.