Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
services that improve their experiences with lakes and climate. Because changed
farming practices generate bundles of changed ecosystem service levels, the most
practical way forward is to convert demand for changed ecosystem service levels
into the area of land under changed management that would be required to generate
jointly the desired levels of change.
Preliminary results using converted supply units, which incorporate stewardship
as described above, indicate that what residents are willing to pay for enhanced
ecosystem services would cover the costs to farmers of providing them. Moreover,
the likely cost of such a program could be covered at the same level as the federal
direct subsidy payments made to Michigan field crop farmers during the 2007-
2012 period (Ma 2011).
Cautions and Emerging Opportunities from Economic Valuation
of Agroecosystem Services
Ecosystem services to and from agriculture are valuable—both intrinsically and
economically. KBS LTER-related research has estimated economic values using
methods that range from simple to complex. The simplest methods require the most
limiting assumptions. For example, trade-off analysis based on budgeting of experi-
mental results assumes that farmer objectives are few and known (such as profit-
ability and specific environmental outcomes), that prices of agricultural inputs and
products are constant and known at levels from the period of study, and that the
experimental biophysical setting and management practices are highly representa-
tive and known at observed levels. The most complex methods have fewer limiting
assumptions, because they explore more fully the heterogeneity and dynamics of
human behavioral interactions with ecosystems (e.g., as depicted in the conceptual
model in Figure 1.4 in Robertson and Hamilton 2015, Chapter 1 in this volume).
Table 3.3 lists some of the ecosystem services whose economic values have been
estimated in KBS LTER research. Each service has a range of estimates and a set
of assumptions that arise from the valuation method (Champ et al. 2003, Freeman
2003). All are limited, too, by the time and place of the underlying data, because
economic systems—like ecological ones—are subject to complex feedbacks.
Hence, extrapolation of values to other settings calls for an understanding of system
dynamics, methodological assumptions, and data limitations (Spash and Vatn 2006,
Wilson and Hoehn 2006).
Economic valuation of ecosystem services can highlight the potential appeal of
changes in agricultural management that deliver enhanced ecosystem services—
specifically those supporting and regulating ecosystem services that lack markets.
Two broad avenues exist for facilitating this: technological innovation and policy
design.
Technological innovation can offer alternative ways to provide such nonmar-
keted ecosystem services as reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved water
quality. Ecological and economic knowledge from KBS LTER research has direct
technological application and possibilities are emerging for manipulating agroeco-
system components for newly understood benefits. One example is to inoculate soil
