Soybean Exports and Deforestation from A World-Systems Perspective: A Cross-National Investigation of Comparative Disadvantage

Abstract

This article draws on world-system theorizing to explore the relationship between deforestation and the vertical flow of soybean exports from less-developed nations to more-developed nations as a specific form of ecologically unequal exchange. Despite overwhelming case-study research exploring soybean–deforestation dynamics in less-developed countries, the current literature lacks any cross-national investigation of this trend. Ordinary least squares regression is used to examine whether soybean exports are associated with deforestation and if the magnitude of this relationship varies by region. Overall, the findings confirm the proposed hypotheses and suggest that having a comparative advantage in soybean production is not a viable development strategy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to thank Edward Kick, Andrew Jorgenson, Brett Clark, Feinian Chen, Laura McKinney, Adam Driscoll, and the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

NOTES

Notes

¹ In fact, a study conducted by Morton et al. (2006) in Brazil using advanced satellite imagery finds that while cattle ranching still takes up the majority of previously deforested land, crop expansion, primarily in soybeans, now accounts for more forest loss annually. They find that from 2001–04, “the average clearing for cropland was more than twice the size as that for pasture” (Morton et al. 2006:14,638). They cite a distinct shift in the clearing dynamics from 2002–03, where the fraction of deforested area for cattle ranching decreased from 78% to 66%, and the fraction of deforested area for soybean production increased from 13% to 23%.

² Listwise deletion is considered a more “conservative” method for dealing with missing data as decreased sample size may inflate the standard error estimates.

³ The natural deforestation rate reflects the annual percent change in natural forest cover, which does not include forest plantations or areas used for forestry and other related purposes, only native vegetation.

⁴ The GFRA generates deforestation figures that combine survey and modeling approaches for both national and subnational data. In other words, the deforestation estimates generated by the FAO were not collected in a uniform manner across all nations/years (Rudel 2005). While satellite imagery is the preferred method of data collection, not all nations are able to provide satellite estimates, and FAO officials sometimes rely on local forestry officials or statistical modeling to obtain forest measures. Although this is an important data limitation to be recognized, the FAO data are still considered to be reliable (especially for the most recent years covered here), and are the most widely applied measures of forest change used by current deforestation researchers (Wunder 2000; Rudel 2005).

⁵ For other studies that have used this method, see York and Gossard (2004) and Burns et al. (2003).

⁶ The variance inflation factor (VIF) is a method of detecting the severity of multicollinearity. More precisely, the VIF is an index which measures how much the variance of a coefficient is increased because of collinearity. Many researchers advocate that VIF estimates should be below 2.5 to prevent bias results as a result of multicollinearity.

⁷ Soybean consumption, urban population growth, environmental international nongovernmental organizations intensity, and democratization were also controlled for. None of these indicators were significant in predicting deforestation, and they did not influence the effect of the key independent variable.

⁸ This is also consistent with prior studies that test for contextual effects, see York and Gossard (2004) and Burns et al. (2003).

⁹ This study does not in any way directly expose the failed logic in comparative advantage theory; however, the results presented here do provide one small piece of evidence that shows that having a comparative advantage in agricultural production is likely to not be ecologically sustainable and therefore lead to prolonged underdevelopment.

¹⁰ Here, I adopt Humphrey, Lewis, and Buttel's definition of sustainable development, where sustainable development involves ecological systems, social systems, and economic systems. Sustainable development thus requires preservation and sustainable use of the environment, social equity, and shared economic well-being (Humphrey, Lewis, and Buttel 2002).