Incentivizing sustainable rangeland practices and policies in Colombia’s Orinoco region

Livestock grazing, along with agriculture, are key drivers of deforestation and land degradation that subsequently affect ecosystem service provision in the tropics. Although environmental and agricultural policies may curtail these negative effects, information is needed on how specific programs and instruments could be used to incentivize ranchers into adopting rangeland practices to achieve land conservation. We examine what encourages livestock ranchers to adopt more sustainable rangeland practices with various technical and conservation attributes in Colombia’s Orinoco region. First, we analyze a management alternative based on an improved pasture (IP) approach traditionally used in tropical South America, and another practice that promotes silvopastoral systems (SP) that better sustain the long term provision of ecosystem services. Second, we assess the influence that technical assistance and conservation payment instruments can have on the adoption of the IP or SP programs. Using expert-based elicitation, questionnaires, choice experiments, and econometrics, we found that when either SP or IP management alternatives include a complete technical assistance program (CTAP), emphasizing forage or cattle production, the propensity to adopt the conservation focused SP alternative significantly increases. The SP alternative with CTAP for cattle production was valued by ranchers at $290 ha/year and the CTAP prioritizing forage production was valued at $233 per ha/year. Nonetheless, a basic technical assistance program for cattle production using the IP alternative was valued at $128, but when including the CTAP, the value increased to $262. Adopting conservation practices in the form of compensation payments for not grazing portions of their land in the SP was valued by ranchers at an average of $8 and $10 in the IP. Our findings show that decisions to adopt conservation oriented rangeland practices and policies are not strictly based on monetary payments for ecosystem services alone, but also on technical support.     

Conservation agriculture practices adopted in southern Brazil

The adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) practices are essential for soil and water conservation. In CA, farmers must adopt no-tillage (NT) with crop rotation to maintain a permanent soil cover. In Brazil, mainly in the South region, for CA to be more efficient, practices such as contour farming and agricultural terraces should also be adopted. Thus, the objective of this study is to determine the extent to which NT has been adopted with crop rotation and others soil and water conservation practices. Data from the Agricultural Census in Paraná State, southern Brazil, were used. For the data analysis, the relationship between the level of adoption of NT and the use of crop rotation, contour farming and agricultural terraces was analyzed. A factor and cluster analysis were performed to distinguish regions in terms of soil and water conservation practices. The results show good overall soil and water conservation practices, although heterogeneity has been observed in the adoption practices between regions. Adoption of NT is high in almost all the studied regions. The conservation practice most widely used with NT is contour farming, whereas the least used is agricultural terraces. Conservation practices for runoff control are being neglected by farmers.     

The Consequences of Cobenefits for the Efficient Design of Carbon Sequestration Programs

In this paper, we study the social efficiency of private carbon markets that include trading in agricultural soil carbon sequestration when there are significant cobenefits (positive environmental externalities) associated with the practices that sequester carbon. Likewise, we investigate the efficiency of government run conservation programs that are designed to promote a broad array of environmental attributes (both carbon sequestration and its cobenefits) for the supply of carbon. Finally, policy design and efficiency issues associated with the potential interplay between a private carbon market and a government conservation program are studied. Empirical analyses for an area that represents a significant potential source of carbon sequestration and its associated cobenefits illustrate the magnitude and complexity of these issues in real world policy design.     

美国以自然资源保护为宗旨的土地休耕经验

美国土地休耕制度包括一系列水土保持计划和以土壤侵蚀度为主要指标的水土保持评价标准,它通过一系列耕地保护计划来推行。回顾美国农业耕作土地采取休耕政策及其实施情况,讨论了值得我国学习和借鉴的土地休耕计划的政策的成本费用等问题。     

Water-Based Recreational Benefits of Conservation Programs: The Case of Conservation Tillage on U.S. Cropland

Conservation programs are a significant part of farm legislation. The recent farm bill increases funding of conservation programs. One result will likely be the increased adoption of basic environmentally benign farming practices, such as conservation tillage. This would lead to improvements in surface water quality. In this paper, we examine the magnitude of the nonmarket use value benefits of these improvements. The findings indicate that moderate to widespread adoption of practices such as conservation tillage would result in significant nonmarket benefits.     

Does Cost-Share Replicate Water Quality Trading Projects? Implications for a Possible Partnership

Water Quality Trading (WQT) and federal conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) employ incentive payments to encourage agricultural best management practices (BMPs). In many cases, WQT and EQIP are encouraging the same types of farmers to implement the same types of BMPs using similar incentive payments. A number of analysts have recommended that WQT partner with EQIP to recruit farmers, yet the literature lacks an analysis of whether EQIP could adequately substitute for WQT's project selection process. In this article, we systematically compare the project ranking procedures used by WQT and EQIP and suggest which partnership structures might be most appropriate.     

The transition to conservation agriculture: an insularization process towards sustainability

Part of the Sustainability Transition Studies, this work addresses the question of the relationship between niches and regimes by examining the transition to conservation agriculture. It seeks to understand how farmers’ transition to conservation agriculture can contribute to a better understanding of the transition of agro-food systems towards sustainability. Based on an analysis of farmers’ trajectories in the Walloon region in Belgium, the paper develops the notion of insularization in order to characterize the emergence of conservation agriculture as a niche that is a dynamic process, growing from within and progressively detaching itself from the conventional agricultural regime. The analysis of farmers’ transition shows how, after an initial phase of destabilization of the conventional ploughing regime, learning and experiencing processes can lead to a transformation in soil and soil quality management perceptions. Our hypothesis is that this cognitive transformation constitutes a tipping point in the insularization process because of its effects on agricultural practices, which increase the detachment of conservation agriculture from the regime and thus embed the irreversibility and sustainability of the transition. Insularization describes an ecologizational pathway of agricultural practices endogenous to the regime that can not only lead to adaptive changes on the periphery of the system, but might also induce a deep and systemic transformation of conventional agricultural practices.     

Farmers’ intrinsic motivations,barriers to the adoption of conservation practices and effectiveness of policy instruments: Empirical evidence from northern Australia

The rate and extent of adoption of conservation practices by farmers is influenced, in principle, by characteristics of the practices and those of the farmers. Governments use policy instruments to increase the rate of adoption of practices which generate public benefits if it is deemed that privately optimal adoption rates will not lead to publicly optimal conservation outcomes. Recent nation-wide conservation programs in Australia have attracted criticism for low levels of effectiveness and efficiency. Could it be that program design has ignored key adoption factors, in particular characteristics of the target audience? If adoption is subject to personal factors, such as the motivations for farming, then it is likely that so are farmers’ responses to policy approaches and instruments. In this case study, surveys were conducted of farmers in three regions within the tropical savannas of northern Australia, where land-use systems are characterized by large-scale broad-acre beef grazing enterprises. Inter alia, these surveys collected data on graziers’ motivations, impediments to adoption of conservation practices, and perceived effectiveness of policy instruments in overcoming impediments. The research found that graziers had a very high level of conservation and lifestyle motivation and were motivated to lesser extents by financial/economic and social considerations, pointing to a strong stewardship ethic of graziers, or altruistic motif. Motivational profiles were significantly correlated with farmers’ perceptions about what constrained them from implementing conservation based management systems. Motivational profiles also explained differences in farmers’ perceptions of and stated propensity to interact with policy instruments, particularly at a regional scale and in the context of historical government interventions. On the basis of the empirical evidence presented, governments would be well advised to harness the diverse set of aspirations and motivations of farmers when designing conservation programs rather than. In particular, conservation programs need to take advantage of farmers’ stewardship ethic for maximum effectiveness and efficiency, and minimize the risk of crowding out intrinsic motivation and altruistic behaviours.     

Conservation practice complementarity and timing of on-farm adoption

The adoption of conservation practices is a dynamic process. Factors that vary over time can affect farmers’ decision to adopt and adoption timing. We used a duration model to evaluate the farmer's adoption time for continuous no-till (CNT), cover crops (CCs), and the variable-rate application of inputs (VRA). We found that producers who had previously adopted soil conservation practices were more likely to adopt additional complementary practices. Farmers using crop rotation adopted CNT and CCs approximately 48% and 62% faster than farmers without a crop rotation, respectively. The CC adoption time was also reduced by 70% for farmers who had adopted CNT. Complementarities between conservation practices may enhance the benefits from adoption and allow farmers to adopt bundles of conservation practices more quickly over time. This can be taken advantage of in conservation programs by promoting or requiring practices first that enhance adoption of other practices. We also found important heterogeneity in the adoption speed associated with farm management characteristics, producers’ attitudes, weather patterns, and crop prices.     

Knowing but not knowing: Systematic conservation planning and community conservation in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca,Mexico

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) seeks to propose new reserves through a scientifically rigorous process using databases and research selection algorithims. However, SCP exercises have been criticized for “knowing but not doing”, i.e. not implementing the proposed reserve. But there is an additional problem that can be called “knowing but not knowing”, knowing things from databases, but not knowing crucial contextual information about community-based social processes that have supported the high forest cover and biodiversity detected. Examined here is how a common property region of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico has maintained high forest cover in the absence of public protected areas, while multiple SCP exercises have advocated for the creation of public protected areas in communal tropical montane cloud forests and pine forests as strategies for biodiversity conservation and resilience to climate change. Methods included archival research, review of community documents, focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, land use transects, and GIS analysis and remote sensing. Conservation in the region originally occurred because of low population densities, steep slopes and a lack of agricultural subsidies, supported by locally adapted agricultural practices. In the 1990s, a transition from passive to active conservation took place with land use zoning plans, community conservation rules, community forestry enterprises and payments for environmental service programs that consolidated a trend towards high, unthreatened forest cover. Today, the study communities have an average of 88.3% forest cover, with 61% of that in informal conservation based on community land use zoning and rules and another 14% governed by forest management plans approved by the Mexican government. We argue that truly systematic conservation plans would seek to understand how communities in the region are already managing forests for conservation. It is pointless and uninformed to advocate for top-down conservation interventions of forests that are already robustly conserved and resilient to climate change due to community action.     

Improving the Cost-Effectiveness of Ecosystem Management: An Application to Waterfowl Production

Species conservation is an important global policy issue. The design of cost-effective species conservation programs requires resource managers to choose from a suite of conservation activities and sites. This article determines cost-effective conservation strategies for waterfowl using a bioeconomic modeling framework, which is developed using a biological simulation model for waterfowl and regression analysis. The model accounts for ( a ) a broad range of land-use and direct wildlife conservation activities, ( b ) the effect of landscape heterogeneity, and ( c ) interactions between conservation activities. Results indicate that accounting for the three factors listed above can improve the cost-effectiveness of waterfowl conservation on agricultural land.     

Governing the transformation towards ‘nature-inclusive’ agriculture: insights from the Netherlands

It is becoming increasingly difficult to combine nature conservation by farmers with intensive and large-scale farming. The Dutch government recently adopted the new policy concept of ‘nature-inclusive’ farming, which aims at promoting more sustainable agricultural practices that minimizes negative ecological impacts, maximizes positive ones and at the same time benefits from natural processes. A transformation towards ‘nature-inclusive’ farming faces three key governance challenges that are elaborated upon in this paper. First, agri-environment schemes and other conservation arrangements need to become more effective. At the same time, nature conservation should be mainstreamed in agricultural policies and in agri-food chains. Second, we need shared meanings about nature-inclusive farming. Third, other forms of knowledge production for nature-inclusive farming are required that focus more on farmers’ knowledge needs.     

Do farmer,household and farm characteristics influence the adoption of sustainable practices? The evidence from the Republic of Moldova

Drought represents the main constraint on agricultural production in the Republic of Moldova indicating the need to shift from conventional agricultural practices to more sustainable ones. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the determinants and barriers influencing the adoption of conservation agriculture practices, an analytic framework combining both binary and ordered probit models addressing the potential endogeneity of variables was applied. A survey was conducted among 234 smallholders in three districts in the Republic of Moldova from July to September 2016. The results indicated that the adoption of sustainable practices by small-scale farmers is influenced predominantly by farmer characteristics and by their perception of risk. The findings of this research confirmed that households with lower access to financial resources are less likely to adopt these practices. Consequently, the provision of alternative financing is needed in the promotion of sustainable agriculture practices.     

Cost-effective Targeting of Riparian Buffers

This paper develops an integrated economic, hydrologic and GIS modeling framework to examine the cost-effective targeting of land retirement for establishing riparian buffers in agricultural watersheds. Previous studies have examined the efficiency of targeting large land parcels for retirement or targeting management practices such as conservation tillage but have not considered narrow variable buffer strips. An empirical application of the framework in the Canagagigue Creek watershed in Ontario shows that average and marginal costs of sediment abatement increase at an increasing rate as the environmental goal becomes more stringent. The locations of the buffer strips vary across the watershed and are not necessarily located on those sites with greatest slope or those adjacent to visible streams. Cost effectiveness is further increased if the targeting is extended to allow for the width of the buffer strip to vary by location rather than assume a uniform width. The modeling results have important policy implications for the design of conservation stewardship programs such as setting appropriate environmental health goals based on marginal abatement costs relative to marginal benefits, and setting physical characteristics of the riparian buffers for selection along the drainage network in targeted sub-catchments.     

The impact of marketing systems on soil sustainability of agriculture in developing countries: a method and an application

This article is concerned with soil‐sustainability problems of agriculture in developing countries, in particular with soil erosion. The aim of our study is to develop a comprehensive model that explains the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices with respect to soil conservation. Our approach includes the following special features: (a) the model is comprehensive in that it includes a large number of institutional, personal–social, economic, and physical explanatory variables; (b) particular attention is paid to the influence of marketing systems on the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, which to our knowledge has been neglected in past research; (c) the concept of adopting sustainable agricultural practices (ASAP) is differentiated into a limited number of basic components of soil conservation; and (d) the model is estimated by Principal Component Regression, which enhances efficient estimation of the impact of many explanatory variables on ASAP. Our model is applied to Cabuyal hillside farming in Colombia. The application demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed model. ASAP is differentiated into three basic components: soil‐disturbance control, soil‐protection practices, and run‐off control. It appears that soil‐disturbance control is particularly influenced by farmers' characteristics, such as education and managerial variables. The second component, soil‐protection practices, appears to be strongly influenced not only by farmers' managerial variables but also by their relationship with their environment, in particular marketing institutions. The third soil‐conservation component, run‐off control, is influenced by the physical characteristics of the plot and by the available farm labor. Our empirical results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed model in designing agricultural policies, because it can determine which variables are more likely to influence the adoption of a specific type of soil conservation.     

Nutrient Management Use at the Rural–Urban Fringe: Does Demand for Environmental Quality Play a Role?

There are relatively few federal regulations that influence U.S. agricultural production. However, local concerns over environmental quality may influence the management practices on farms. A detailed analysis of corn farms yields insight into this relationship and its implications for the use of cropland best management practices. Our findings suggest that increased contact between working farms and suburban and exurban populations likely increase the use of nutrient management plans, a management-intensive conservation practice. However, nutrient management practices were not found to be associated with waters listed as impaired because of nutrient pollution.     

Farmers’ Preferences for Production Practices: A Choice Experiment Study in the Rhone River Delta

This article examines farmers' preferences for both cropping and management practices, which are of policy interest because of their environmental impact. We present the results of a choice experiment survey of all agricultural decision makers in the Camargue region. A latent class model identified three classes. The main class encompasses farmers complying with the norms of the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI): Riz de Camargue. We estimated the monetary value of each of the relevant agricultural practices. Our results make a strong case for differentiating incentives to encourage environmentally friendly practices and identify the diversity of values attached to the main components of rice cropping technology in the area. Estimates of the implicit prices indicate that most rice growers can be persuaded to adopt environmentally friendly practices. These findings could help in designing targeted contracts according to farmers' preferences, in line with conservation or environmental objectives.     

Adoption of climate‐smart practices and its impact on farm performance and risk exposure among smallholder farmers in Ghana

Increased climate variability during the last four decades has made the agricultural environment in many developing countries more uncertain, resulting in increasing exposure to risk when producing crops. In this study, we use recent farm‐level data from Ghana to examine the drivers of individual and joint adoption of crop choice and soil and water conservation practices, and how adoption of these practices impacts on farm performance (crop revenue) and exposure to risks (skewness of crop yield). We employ a multinomial endogenous switching regression model to account for selectivity bias due to both observable and unobservable factors. The empirical results reveal that farmers’ adoption of crop choice and soil and water conservation leads to higher crop revenues and reduced riskiness in crop production, with the largest impact on crop revenues coming from joint adoption. The findings also show that education of the household head, access to extension and weather information influence the likelihood of adopting these practices. Thus, enhancing extension services and access to climate information and irrigation can reduce gaps in adoption of soil and water conservation and crop choice, considered as climate‐smart practices that will eventually improve crop revenues and reduce farmers’ exposure to climate‐related production risks.     

Development stressors are stronger than protected area management: A case of the Pantanos de Centla Biosphere Reserve,Mexico

Evaluation of the management effectiveness of protected areas has become a global priority, especially in coastal zones, where essential services are threatened by land use pressures. To assess the effectiveness of a coastal protected area, we estimated the land-use change (LUC) within and outside of the Pantanos de Centla Biosphere Reserve (PCBR) and interviewed key stakeholders to identify the main stressors causing LUC. The native vegetation cover under the PCBR protection decreased by 65% over 24 years; whereas agriculture and livestock lands doubled, even within the core conservation areas of the PCBR. The greatest loss was in the flooded forest (48%), where the reduction was similar in and around the reserve. The effectiveness of reserve management was affected by drivers of land use change, which include agricultural and livestock enterprises that are run by government programs. Effective management of the PCBR has been undermined by poor management practices, limited capacity and resources, and inadequate zoning design. Protected areas and its surrounding landscapes could be considered to be natural experiments for future research, where high value land uses and conservation objectives coincide within coastal areas that will face a predicted sea level rise, more intense floods and higher temperatures.     

Changes in Implicit Prices of Prairie Pothole Habitat

I estimate changes in agricultural land value discounts due to prairie pothole habitat. The implicit prices of pothole habitat acreage are estimated from a series of hedonic models using Manitoba agricultural land transaction data from 1990 to 2009. I find that the discount on wetland acreage increased by at least 40%, suggesting that significant unanticipated increases in the benefits of converting wetlands emerged over the course of the study period. I also estimate a series of quantile regression hedonic models. The quantile regression models indicate that the land value discounts on prairie pothole acreage as a percent of per acre sales prices are constant across the land value distribution. These results have implications for the design of habitat conservation programs, particularly those involving long‐term agreements between landowners and conservation agencies.