Smallholder farmers find themselves at the crossroads of the global efforts to reduce worldwide poverty and hunger, as well as the urgent need to prevent deforestation and the associated environmental consequences. In this work, we study how the smallholder farmers' welfare can be improved while preventing deforestation. For this, we propose a detailed operational model of a farmer’s dynamic decisions of land-clearing and production, under liquidity constraints and random cost and yield shocks.

Many multinational buyers of agricultural commodities have made commitments to halt deforestation and improve farmer livelihoods in their supply chains. We propose group incentives conditional on forest protection requirements as a feasible mechanism for achieving this. We develop an analytical model and characterize the cases when group incentives dominate individual incentives, and use data collected from field research in Indonesia to assess the effectiveness of the approach.

Right-to-Repair regulations require producers to supply necessary information and parts for consumers to independently undertake repairs. These regulations aim to prolong product lifetimes through repairs, but they may have adverse consequences such as cloning. This may encourage producers to reconsider their business model choices between ownership and non-ownership models. We analyze the effect of RTR on business model choice, and the implications for producers, consumers, and the environment.