export crop cultivation do not exist. The expectations about the potential impacts of snow pea adoption in Guatemala have so far been informed by qualitative studies. Saenz de Tejada’s (2002) qualitative work in Santiago and Pacul indicates that while some export crop producers accumulated more land with NTX earnings, others used their savings to improve housing conditions and purchase livestock and durable goods, including pick-up trucks. Her findings also uncover nostalgia for the boom period and the smallholder view that the best approach to snow pea cultivation was to adopt early, grow intensively, and invest the returns in ways that would allow for withdrawal as the profitability plummeted.<sup>15</sup> On the other hand, Hamilton and Fischer (2003; 2005) demonstrate positive local perceptions of economic and social change subsequent to the diffusion of non-traditional export crops through qualitative studies of small-scale NTX farmers in Chimaltenango. Their arguments, however, are largely based on answers given to a subjective set of questions concerning the overall changes in the economic situation, educational attainment, nutrition and health-care of the surveyed families, regardless of their NTX adoption status, throughout the last fifteen-to-twenty year period of NTX production in the communities. Moreover, the perception of NTX production as a viable income generation strategy in these communities may be a manifestation of a form of bounded rationality on the part of the survey respondents in the absence of alternative livelihood strategies.<sup>16</sup> In the face of overwhelming production, marketing, and institutional concerns associated with snow pea production during the 1990s, and the qualitative evidence on the links between snow pea adoption paths and changes in welfare and livelihood strategies over time in Santiago Sacatepéquez, we hypothesize that although surveyed communities are likely to have experienced welfare improvements in the period of 1985-2005, the extent of improvement among those that stuck with snow pea cultivation or later adopted the crop in the post-boom era is expected to be inferior to the comparable trends among those that either never engaged in export crop production or withdrew from snow pea cultivation following the boom period of the 1980s.

15 Over time, non-farm incomes and employment have gained increasing importance over time in the livelihood strategies of resource-poor households in Santiago Sacatepéquez. Recent qualitative evidence indicates that sizeable number of smaller and resource-poor farmers, whose risk bearing ability could not meet the challenges of growing price uncertainty and volatility in agricultural incomes in the medium-term either temporarily abandoned snow peas, placed greater emphasis on the production of traditional vegetables, and increased their reliance on non-farm income or abandoned agriculture altogether and sought off-farm employment. While the changes in household livelihood strategies was partly necessitated by the rise and persistence of extensive problems associated with snow peas production that taxed the adopters’ risk bearing ability, it was also fostered by the emergence of alternative non-farm employment options that have increased the opportunity cost of family and hired labor involvement in a stagnant agricultural sector. Although non-farm wage labor options until the late 1980s were mainly in the construction and security sectors for men and in weaving, petty trade and domestic service sectors for women, the alternatives were enriched with the establishment of _maquilas_ , i.e. factories that assemble previously manufactured parts of various exports, including textiles and electronics (Golding, 2001), along the Pan-American highway, in the nearby area of Manzanales and municipalities of San Pedro Sacatepéquez, San Lucas Sacatepéquez, and Santa Lucia Milpas Atlas (Katz, 1995; Saenz de Tejada, 2002).

16 The difference between the communities that inform Hamilton and Fischer’s analysis and the ones tracked in this study is that while non-farm employment opportunities are not available to farmers that reside in their communities of interest, ample opportunities for off-farm labor emerged and persisted in and around Santiago Sacatepéquez since the early 1990s. This difference is likely to alter impact perceptions of NTXs across communities and has implications for the differences in opportunity cost of family labor engaged in agriculture.

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