An Economic Analysis of Alternative Conservation Practices Used to Mitigate Non-point Source Pollution in Mississippi Agriculture

An Economic Analysis of Alternative Conservation Practices Used to Mitigate Non-point Source Pollution in Mississippi Agriculture PDF Author: Daniel Sharp Spencer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
The agricultural industry in the United States has seen unprecedented growth in productivity and changes in industry structure. However, some negative environmental effects have emerged related to nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment runoff. This study developed a novel, community economic systems methodology called the Biophysical and Economic Simulation of Agricultural Production (BESAP) model. This analyzed the economic tradeoff between farm and community level impacts associated with potential water quality standards for mitigating runoff in Mississippi. Key findings include: 1) farm-level net returns decrease with more stringent conservation practices to reduce nutrient runoff; 2) reductions in farm-level net returns have greater indirect cost effects on input suppliers and households than at the farm-level; and 3) farm-level net returns vary significantly depending on the conservation practices used, and the greater the change in farm-level net returns, the greater the net economic effect on the local food system in terms of employment, and value-added.

An Economic Analysis of Alternative Conservation Practices Used to Mitigate Non-point Source Pollution in Mississippi Agriculture

An Economic Analysis of Alternative Conservation Practices Used to Mitigate Non-point Source Pollution in Mississippi Agriculture PDF Author: Daniel Sharp Spencer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
The agricultural industry in the United States has seen unprecedented growth in productivity and changes in industry structure. However, some negative environmental effects have emerged related to nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment runoff. This study developed a novel, community economic systems methodology called the Biophysical and Economic Simulation of Agricultural Production (BESAP) model. This analyzed the economic tradeoff between farm and community level impacts associated with potential water quality standards for mitigating runoff in Mississippi. Key findings include: 1) farm-level net returns decrease with more stringent conservation practices to reduce nutrient runoff; 2) reductions in farm-level net returns have greater indirect cost effects on input suppliers and households than at the farm-level; and 3) farm-level net returns vary significantly depending on the conservation practices used, and the greater the change in farm-level net returns, the greater the net economic effect on the local food system in terms of employment, and value-added.

Alternative Policies for Controlling Nonpoint Agricultural Sources of Water Pollution

Alternative Policies for Controlling Nonpoint Agricultural Sources of Water Pollution PDF Author: Wesley D. Seitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural pollution
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Essays on Conservation Policies and Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Control

Essays on Conservation Policies and Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Control PDF Author: Katsuya Tanaka
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural pollution
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This dissertation consists of three papers on agricultural nonpoint source pollution and control. The first paper focuses primarily on agricultural land use changes under alternative conservation policies. The second and third papers address environmental implications of these policies and their cost effectiveness. In the first paper, the effect of alternative conservation policies on agricultural land use in the Upper Mississippi River Basin is quantitatively evaluated. Site-specific land use decisions are analyzed using a set of discrete choice models and site-specific economic and physical information. The models are then used to predict farmers' choice of crop, crop rotation, and participation in the Conservation Reserve Program under alternative conservation policies. Results suggest that acreage planted to "polluting" crops (corn and soybean) are quite responsive to the fertilizer-use tax, but not quite as responsive to the two payment programs considered in this paper. In the second paper, the social costs of alternative conservation policies are estimated for reducing nitrate-N concentrations in the Upper Mississippi River. This objective is achieved by developing an integrated modeling framework consisting of economic and physical models. Results suggest that the nitrogen fertilizer-use tax is much more cost effective than the three payment programs. Incentive payments for conservation tillage are most cost effective among the three payment programs, but can only reduce nitrate-N concentrations to a limited level. The potential of incentive payments for corn-soybean rotation is even more limited. Although the Conservation Reserve Program can achieve the highest level of nitrate-N concentrations reduction, it imposes the highest cost to society. In the third paper, the relative efficiency between the targeted and uniform fertilizer-use taxes for reducing agricultural water pollution is estimated. This paper adds some refinements to the integrated model developed in the second paper, for assessing nitrate-N runoff from the 9 subbasins in the Des Moines Watershed. In contrast to previous studies, results in this paper suggest that the targeted fertilizer-use tax outperforms the uniform tax under spatially heterogeneous conditions. The targeted fertilizer-use tax reduces the aggregate farm profit loss under the uniform tax by up to 30 percent in this watershed.

Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act

Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309177812
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
The Mississippi River is, in many ways, the nation's best known and most important river system. Mississippi River water quality is of paramount importance for sustaining the many uses of the river including drinking water, recreational and commercial activities, and support for the river's ecosystems and the environmental goods and services they provide. The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in 1972, is the cornerstone of surface water quality protection in the United States, employing regulatory and nonregulatory measures designed to reduce direct pollutant discharges into waterways. The Clean Water Act has reduced much pollution in the Mississippi River from "point sources" such as industries and water treatment plants, but problems stemming from urban runoff, agriculture, and other "non-point sources" have proven more difficult to address. This book concludes that too little coordination among the 10 states along the river has left the Mississippi River an "orphan" from a water quality monitoring and assessment perspective. Stronger leadership from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is needed to address these problems. Specifically, the EPA should establish a water quality data-sharing system for the length of the river, and work with the states to establish and achieve water quality standards. The Mississippi River corridor states also should be more proactive and cooperative in their water quality programs. For this effort, the EPA and the Mississippi River states should draw upon the lengthy experience of federal-interstate cooperation in managing water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.

Financing Alternatives for Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Programs

Financing Alternatives for Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Programs PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural pollution
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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The Welfare Economics of Alternative Renewable Resource Strategies

The Welfare Economics of Alternative Renewable Resource Strategies PDF Author: Robert N. Stavins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351621181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This study, originally published in 1990, seeks to address several important policy questions associated with the ongoing depletion of forested wetlands. First, in the context of Environmental Impact Statements, should the estimated areas of impact of Federal flood-control and drainage projects on wetlands be limited to (minimal) construction impacts, or should they include impacts which occur when such projects cause private landowners to drain and clear their wetland holdings? A second crucial question is whether wetland depletion and conversion to agricultural cropland has been excessive. This title will be of interest to students of Environmental Economics and Policy.

Promoting Voluntary Adoption of Conservation Technologies

Promoting Voluntary Adoption of Conservation Technologies PDF Author: Kenneth A. Baerenklau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Integrated Natural-human System Modeling

Integrated Natural-human System Modeling PDF Author: Zhengxin Lang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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In the United States, there are more than 330 million acres of row crop agricultural land that produce an abundant supply of food and other products to support food security and economic development. Meanwhile, agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution, most generally occurring in the absence of a landscape conservation plan, is the leading cause of water quality impairments in the rivers and streams in the United States. Voluntary incentive programs are the primary policy mechanism to improve the water quality of agricultural landscapes, employed to increase the supply of non-market ecosystem services alongside food and energy provision. This project seeks to improve the cost-effectiveness of the incentive designs by paying careful attention to both biophysical and farmers' socio-economic factors. Specifically, I 1).developed a hybrid optimization paradigm that combined the evolutionary algorithms with weighted benefit-to-cost ratio ranking to tackle the problem of spatial interdependence in multi-objective optimization; 2).identified the underlying socio-psychological drivers of farmers' intentions for conservation practices adoption, based on first-hand agricultural landowner survey data, factor analysis, and cluster analysis; and 3).estimated landowners' Willingness-to-Accept to the incentive payments and characterized their preference heterogeneity by discrete choice experiments and mixed logit modeling. The project's results enable us to identify the spatially explicit cost-efficient conservation portfolios and analyze trade-offs/synergies among water conservation objectives under various management scenarios. Meanwhile, it advances the designs of targeted incentive mechanisms corresponding to landowners' preferences. My research integrated interdisciplinary knowledge and techniques to explore the complex natural-human system within the Minnesota River Basin for cost-efficient conservation incentive designs. The modeling framework is also transferable to other agricultural landscapes across the nation.

Economic Incentives for the Control of Agricultural Non-point Source Water Pollution

Economic Incentives for the Control of Agricultural Non-point Source Water Pollution PDF Author: Marca Jon Weinberg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural pollution
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Selected Water Resources Abstracts

Selected Water Resources Abstracts PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Hydrology
Languages : en
Pages : 806

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