Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
household was willing to pay $141 per year for a 1% reduction per year in green-
house gas emission levels.
On the supply side, then, the Michigan corn and soybean farmers were clearly
willing to change their cropping practices to generate additional ecosystem ser-
vices if they were paid to do so. The farmers would expand both the complexity of
their farming practices and the acreage under these practices if they were given the
opportunity and would thereby generate a supply of land managed to deliver addi-
tional ecosystem services. On the demand side, the state residents appeared to be
willing to pay for reduced numbers of eutrophic lakes, and a significant fraction of
the residents appeared to be willing to pay for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
How can we link buyers and sellers?
Important to both groups was how ecosystem services are characterized and bun-
dled. It is difficult to measure the value of individual ecosystem services from agri-
culture. Management decisions affect multiple services simultaneously; farming is a
systems-level enterprise with system-level responses (Robertson et al. 2004), such
that ecosystem services come in bundles and should probably be marketed as such.
Credit stacking in carbon and other payment for environmental services markets (e.g.,
Fox et al. 2011) cannot be avoided because of the varied objectives of the many
willing governmental and nongovernmental payers. Moreover, credit stacking should
probably be encouraged in order to take full advantage of co-benefits and fully exploit
available synergies. Converting demand for additional ecosystem services into the
area of land required to generate the desired change is a logical next step.
Although approaches to payment for ecosystem services deserve further
research, they are but one among many policy tools available to meet the demand
for additional ecosystem services. Exploring and testing alternative tools—espe-
cially in light of new precision-farming technologies—is an appropriate response
to the evidence here that, at reasonable prices, farmers are willing to supply and
consumers are willing to pay for a meaningful set of ecosystem services.
Where from Here?
Additional knowledge about row-crop ecosystems will reveal additional opportuni-
ties for providing services and delivering them more efficiently. One example might
be to manage noncrop areas in agricultural landscapes to support natural enemies of
crop pests (Landis et al. 2000). Another might be to more precisely estimate or meet
crop nitrogen needs in order to avoid excess nitrogen fertilizer additions (Robertson
and Vitousek 2009). And a third might be to manage the soil microbial community
to restore the capacity to remove methane from the atmosphere (Levine et al. 2011).
Understanding and evaluating the delivery of services in a systems context will
allow the full suite of trade-offs and synergies to be considered.
Long-term agricultural research reveals ecological trends that build slowly and
sometimes subtly. It also allows researchers to capture the expression of episodic
events, such as weather extremes, pest outbreaks, and species introductions, and
it permits the evaluation of biological change against slow but steady changes
in climate; technology; markets; and public attitudes toward food, fuel, and the
