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About Pablo's Work

My current research uses Mexico as a study site and has two main streams. The first looks at the impacts of the agroforestation program Sembrando Vida. We found that with an investment of 11 billion USD over 6 years, the program is more likely to address poverty and deforestation than biodiversity priorities. Additionally, despite planting 1 million hectares of trees in agroforests, forest loss in participating villages has decreased minimally (1.4%). The second stream studies small farms in terms of their numbers, location and food production using census microdata. We produced the first high-resolution map of small farms in Mexico showing the amount of land they farm and how much food they produce. Roughly half of the farms in Mexico are smallholders (farm size < 2ha) and a third are family farms (family labor > 50%), while subsistence farming is the small farm definition that is more closely related to poverty. The overarching questions of my PhD revolve around the role of small farms in the Forest Landscape Restoration agenda.

I hold a Bs. in Mathematics with emphasis in logic and topology and a Masters in Rural Development Management with orientation to Family Agriculture and Food Security/Sovereignty. My first research projects were related to the Mayan Milpa system in the Yucatan region. Founder and director of Proyecto Kool Ja. Worked for several local NGOs in the Yucatan Peninsula; with El Hombre Sobre la Tierra (HST) implementing programmes of agriculture, microbusiness, health and education. As director of the Regional (subnational) Bioslurry and Biogas Programme (RBBP) in the Yucatan Peninsula run by the International Renewable Resources Institute, we installed small biodigesters in small farm owner's backyards with the objective of converting animal manure into biogas and bioslurry. This bioslurry was the main input for agroforestry plots that we established to enhance Food Security/Sovereignty in the region.

As a PhD student in the University of British Columbia in the Landscapes and Livelihoods lab of J. Rhemtulla, I use R and quantitative methods to investigate small farm dynamics. I plan to cross that data with Earth Observation/Remote Sensing products to understand the relationship that arises between small farms and the changes and configuration of the landscapes they are located in. You can see my publications here.