Three Essays on Conservation Practices, Agricultural Land Uses and Environmental Benefits

Open Access
- Author:
- Li, Xiaogu
- Graduate Program:
- Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Economics
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 05, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Katherine Yoder Zipp, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Katherine Yoder Zipp, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
James Samuel Shortle, Committee Member
Daniel Brent, Committee Member
Heather Elise Preisendanz, Outside Member
Edward C Jaenicke, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Land Use
Conservation
Best Management Practices
Water
Riparian Buffer
Environmental Policy - Abstract:
- Conservation practices like installation and management of riparian buffers and other best management practices (BMP) can efficiently reduce nutrient runoff and sediment loss from agricultural landscapes, and thus provide various environmental benefits such as water quality improvements and wildlife habitat restoration. In the U.S., incentive programs and policies are available to farmers and landowners to encourage participation in these conservation practices. However, due to high costs for implementation and maintenance, opportunity costs of foregone productivity and profitability, as well as the limitations and restrictions in policy designs, participation in these conservation programs and consequential environmental benefits are not yet as expected. This dissertation presents theoretical and empirical approaches to investigate the economic and policy effects of offering incentives for the adoption of conservation practices, how farmers and agricultural landowners perceive and accept these policy incentives, and the expected economic and environmental outcomes. The first essay develops an integrated assessment of the riparian buffers in Pennsylvania and proposes flexible designs for buffer installations and contract compensations in order to encourage participation. The second essay uses a dynamic optimization model to evaluate the economic and environmental costs-and-benefits from converting conventional nutrient-intense crops like corn-soybeans rotation to renewable biofuel crops like switchgrass. The third essay investigates the impacts of buffer installations on the market value of agricultural land parcels in Maryland.