California Agroecosystem Services:
Assessment, Valuation and Policy Perspective -
Proceedings from the Sept 2007 workshop
Combined pdf of all papers below (pdf, 3120 kb)
|
A Framework for Assessment of California Agroecosystems
Tom Tomich, Kelly Garbach, Canter, Agricultural Sustainability Institute, UC Davis (pdf, 2400 kb)
Modeling Agroecosystem Services for Policy Analysis
John Antle, Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Montana State University
(pdf, 190 kb)
Evaluating Regulation and Conservation Policy
for California’s Agri-environmental Externalities
Nicolai V. Kuminoff, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Virginia Tech. (pdf, 575 kb)
Using Biophysical Information in Policies for Agroecosystem Services in California
Louise Jackson, Department of Air, Water, and Land Resources, UC Davis (pdf, 440 kb) |
Making Policy to Achieve Sustainable Agriculture
American Farmland Trust
Abstract, Ann Sorensen
AAAS
In the past
few decades, U.S. agriculture has steadily cleaned up “its
footprint” on the landscape but major challenges remain.
In 1999, USDA’s Economic Research Service looked at the
sustainability of U.S. agriculture and concluded that “Environmental
programs exist and the resource base is depreciating but the
extent of the effects is in the range that can be adequately
addressed by thoughtful policy.” Studies that look at
agriculture’s impacts on the environment and the use of
conservation practices to minimize those impacts are challenged
by a continuing lack of qualitative and quantitative data. Nonetheless,
they paint a complex picture. The policy options available to
increase the environmental sustainability of farming are varied.
Regulatory approaches, like expanding conservation compliance
(i.e., tying eligibility for federal payments to conservation
behavior) or enacting a national environmental law for farming
could be very effective but may not be politically feasible.
Incentive-based approaches to help farmers adopt more conservation
practices are more palatable to lawmakers and landowners and
have broad public support. These options include increasing funding
for conservation programs, consolidating, refining and simplifying
programs to make them easier to use and more focused on producing
environmental benefits, and introducing conservation loan guarantees
or encouraging more cooperative conservation partnerships. The
most intriguing, and perhaps most promising long term approach,
however, is the possibility of creating markets for the environmental
services offered by agriculture--including cleaner water, mitigation
of greenhouse gases and flooding, wildlife habitat, and restoration
of wetlands. With global climate change and the search for alternative
energy sources, agriculture could potentially become a potent
environmental service provider. For this reason, we are cautiously
optimistic that the political will and policies to help agriculture
implement the necessary conservation practices, create the necessary
infrastructures and become a net provider of environmental services
for this country is within our reach.
The Science of Sustainability in U.S.
Agriculture (Powerpoint,
11000 kb)
Kenneth G. Cassman Director, Nebraska Center for Energy
Science Research, University of Nebraska
The sustainability of U.S. agriculture must be considered from
a global perspective because U.S. agriculture accounts for the
greatest share of world food exports. Agriculture must address
the following global challenges: continued population increase,
limited arable land and water resources, climate change, and
rising prices for petroleum-based motor fuels. Of these, rising
fuel prices are having the largest impact on agriculture because
they are driving a rapid expansion of biofuel production from
grain, sugar, and oilseed crops—both in the U.S. and globally.
The benefits from biofuels are compelling: decreased reliance
on imported petroleum, a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions,
increased agricultural commodity prices and farm income, rural
jobs and economic development, and reduced crop subsidies. High
commodity prices will motivate farmers to increase crop yields
and expand production area. A marked acceleration in the rate
of yield gain for the major crops will be required to avoid conversion
of marginal land not suited for crop production, and conservation
of centers of biodiversity such as grassland savannahs, forests
and wetlands. Crop and soil management practices used to achieve
substantially higher yields must protect water and soil quality
and contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Although
it is possible to meet these challenges, the magnitude of scientific
innovation required has been underestimated. A dynamic, real-time,
site-specific, “ecological systems approach” will
be needed. Biotechnology and transgenic crops are not a silver
bullet. Eventually, development of cellulosic (biomass) ethanol
will reduce the need to use food crops for biofuels, but large-scale
deployment of cellulosic ethanol systems is 7-10 years away.
During this period, grain-sugar-oilseed biofuel systems will
build out to utilize a significant portion of global food crop
production. There is an urgent need to focus research and technology
development on ensuring the environmental sustainability of high-yield
food-crop systems to meet demand for both food and biofuels.
U.S. Farm Programs and Agricultural Sustainability (Powerpoint,
240 kb)
Daniel A. Sumner
University of California
Agricultural Issues Center and Department of Agricultural and Resource
Economics University of California, Davis
When Can Intelligent Design of Crops by Humans Outperform Natural
Selection?
R.F. Denison, University of Minnesota
Abstract (download
full paper, pdf, 100kb)
Natural selection operated on the wild ancestors of crop plants
for millions of years. Many seemingly intelligent design changes
that we could make to enzyme structure or gene expression would
duplicate (at least in phenotypic effect) variants already rejected
by past natural selection. These variants died out because they
decreased individual plant survival or reproduction under preagricultural
conditions. Many of the variants rejected by past natural selection
would also reduce crop yield or quality today, so it would be
a waste of time to duplicate them using molecular methods. For
example, most changes to rubisco will decrease photosynthesis
(and crop yield) under current conditions, just as they would
have decreased photosynthesis (and individual plant fitness)
under preagricultural conditions. A few of natural selection’s ‘rejects’,
however, would be genuine improvements by human criteria. Can
we identify these promising rejects? Opportunities for crop genetic
improvement that were missed by past natural selection are likely
to fall into three major categories. First, and most important,
conflicts of interest among competing plants, or between plants
and their microbial symbionts, can cause trade-offs between individual
plant fitness (favoured by past natural selection) and the collective
performance of the crop community. Therefore, we can sometimes
increase yield by reversing the effects of past natural selection
for individual competitiveness. Second, changes in climate, soil
fertility and pest populations mean that some variants that were
less fit in the past will be more fit today. In this case, crop
genetic improvement may accelerate changes that are already favoured
by ongoing natural selection in an agricultural context. Third,
eventually molecular methods may produce genotypes so different
from anything that existed in the past that we cannot assume
they were tested and rejected by natural selection. C4 photosynthesis
has evolved repeatedly, however, so a proposed innovation would
have to be more radical than C4 photosynthesis before we can
assume it was missed by past natural selection. The relative
importance of these three kinds of opportunity is likely to change
over the next few decades. Some trade-offs between individual
competitiveness and the yield of the crop community have already
been exploited, as in dwarf wheat and rice, but other opportunities
may remain. Our ability to design radical new enzymes from scratch,
or to predict the consequences of major changes in gene expression
patterns, may improve over coming decades. Even after most significant
opportunities to improve yield potential (yield in the absence
of pests and diseases) have been fully exploited, ongoing evolution
of pests and pathogens will create a continual need for ‘Red
Queen Breeding’, generating a stream of new cultivars to
keep up with the latest biotic threats.
Role
of Farm Programs in Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture
Briefing (pdf, 240k)
Daniel Sumner and Antoine Champetier de Ribes
Environmental Sustainability of Agriculture and U.S. Farm Programs
Daniel A. Sumner
The main U.S. farm subsidy programs transfer between $10 billion
and $25 billion per year to farms that produce wheat, rice, oilseeds,
feed grains and cotton. These programs have evolved since the
1930s, but the basics remain. Subsidies stimulate additional
production of the supported crops and thereby suppress market
prices for those crops. Estimated production and price impacts
range from just a few percent (for soybeans in recent years)
to 10 to 15 percent or more (for cotton and corn in years when
market prices are expected to be low). These impacts depend on
the expected share of revenue from subsidy, the share of the
U.S. crop in relevant markets and the price elasticities of supply
and demand. These price impacts have been the basis for WTO complaints
by trading partners. Although there are “conservation compliance” rules
designed to reduce negative environmental consequences of commodity
programs, subsidies continue to encourage use of additional resources
and purchased inputs for these crops (i.e. more land, water,
fertilizer, pesticides, etc.). Farm subsidies distribute most
benefits roughly in proportion to production or land base in
the program crops. That means that bigger farms get more, but
there is no solid evidence that programs are biased towards larger
farms or that they stimulate larger farm size. Payments benefit
owners of farmland and suppliers of inputs and resources, whether
they are farm operators or not. These benefits come at the expense
of taxpayers and economic efficiency. In addition to commodity
subsidies, farm programs include long-term land retirement (such
as the Conservation Reserve Program) and so-called “working
lands” programs (such as the Environmental Quality Incentive
Program and the Conservation Security Program). Complex technical
and economic issues surround effective targeting of such programs.
One challenge is tying measured environmental outcomes to on-farm
practices; another is designing schemes to maximize environmental
benefits given limited funds. Some current programs allow farmers
to bid for the lowest payment they would accept for undertaking
certain practices (including land idling) on their farms. These
bids are ranked by an estimate of environmental benefit per dollar
and bids are accepted to achieve the most cost-effective outcome.
It is challenging to design programs that facilitate more accurate
measurement of environmental impacts and pay farms not for practices
but directly for environmental or ecological services, either
in the form of positive benefits from farmland use (such as carbon
sequestration or wildlife habitat) or reduced negative environmental
consequences of farming. Farm programs are scheduled for renewal,
reformulation or removal with the 2007 Farm Bill that is now
being developed in Congress. New legislation provides an opportunity
to reconsider how farm programs contribute to national objectives
and gauge if alternative roles for government might be better
tuned to current realities and goals.
|