Market access and agricultural land use: Does distance matter? Insights from Colombia

A rich dataset, based on the agricultural census, characterizing Colombian agricultural units is used to examine the relationship between market access and market influence, on one hand, and the intensity of land use for productive purposes as instrumented as the share of usable land with respect to the total area of the production unit, on the other. We find that there is a stable and significant negative relationship between the two, meaning that as market access and market influence improve there is a decline in the share of usable land in average, reflecting a lower extent an intensity of agricultural activity. We additionally explore heterogenous effects arising from different market types and find that this relationship changes with the type of municipality, yielding significant implications for land and rural policy. Overall, the results provide evidence supporting the convenience of place-based policies and the usefulness of the qualified von Thunen model for approaching the analysis of rural land use.

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