Project Number: 3602-13000-008-03
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jun 08, 2004
End Date: Jun 07, 2009

Objective:
To establish methods for enabling policy makers to assess the costs and benefits of alternative conservation policies in an attempt to maximize the benefits of their resource allocation or alternatively, to minimize the costs of achieveing a specified level of environmental benefits and to investigate the influence of other factors, such as, environmental stewardship, goals of the farm firm, lifestyle and the local culture, upon the decision concerning their use of conservation systems. Specific objectives include 1) determine the farm firm financial impacts of and the decision making values for utilizing alternative production practices and systems given the unique natural capital, environmental characteristics and cultural norms in the St. Joseph Watershed; 2) determine which acres, which production systems, which inducements and the level of costs involved to induce land management changes to meet alternative water quality (WQ) standards; and 3) estimate and place a value on some of the benefits resulting from reductions in concentration of contaminants and the correpsonding changes in ecological system health. Development of economic indicators of the impact of conservation practices at both the whole farm enterprises level and at watershed/basin scale.

Approach:
Develop farm firm production models and construct decision models specific to the unique physical and cultural environment in the St. Joseph River Watershed; Develop a model to minimize costs of achieving alternative levels of pollution reduction based upon results from the farm firm financial models, the decision criteria/values specific to land managers in the St. Joseph River Watershed and the results from the hydrologic transport models of the watershed; Utilizing techniques from experimental economics contingent valuation and hedonic modeling, estimate the value of a portion of the benefits resulting from the pollution reduction and the concomitant increase in environmental quality.