The estimation of agricultural policy effects on soil erosion - an application for the bio-economic model MODAM.

Abstract As agricultural policies affect land use, they have effects on the amount of soil erosion in agricultural regions through changes of the economic conditions of agricultural production. Prices of inputs and outputs, regulations and incentives can change, forcing or encouraging farmers to adopt new crop rotations. This paper shows how a bio-economic model can be used to describe and estimate the effects of policies on agricultural production and the risk of soil erosion at the example of a region in North-Eastern Germany. The model uses both an assessment tool that is based on a fuzzy-logic approach for the estimation of soil erosion risk of cropping practices, and a linear programming model, that simulates farmers’ economic behaviour under the assumption of gross margin maximisation being the main goal of farmers’ actions. The analysed policy options were both a targeted and an untargeted incentive programme for reduced tillage, and a restriction option where high erosive crops are not allowed on high erodible field types. The results show that policy changes can have an impact on soil erosion. Furthermore, soil conservation policies are shown to have different levels of efficiency in terms of reduced soil erosion related to the costs of the policy. In the case of this study, a restriction option was more efficient than the incentive options. The results of such simulations can serve as a decision support for the development of soil conservation policies and help to foresee the effects of general changes of agricultural policies.

[1]  A. Weersink,et al.  Cost-effective Targeting of Riparian Buffers , 2004 .

[2]  Andreas Meyer-Aurich,et al.  Developing agricultural land use strategies appropriate to nature conservation goals and environmental protection , 1998 .

[3]  A. Weersink,et al.  Endogenous Transport Coefficients: Implications for Improving Water Quality from Multi-Contaminants in an Agricultural Watershed , 1999 .

[4]  H. Kächele,et al.  Modelling on-farm costs of soil conservation policies with MODAM , 2003 .

[5]  T. Dickinson,et al.  An Economic Analysis of Targeting Soil Conservation Measures with Respect to Off-site Water Quality , 1995 .

[6]  Kenneth E. McConnell,et al.  An Economic Model of Soil Conservation , 1983 .

[7]  Karl Auerswald,et al.  Bodenerosion durch Wasser : Vorhersage des Abtrags und Bewertung von Gegenmaßnahmen , 1987 .

[8]  Peter Abelson,et al.  Cost benefit analysis and environmental problems , 1979 .

[9]  P. Zander,et al.  Modelling multiple objectives of land use for sustainable development , 1999 .

[10]  W. H. Wischmeier,et al.  Predicting rainfall erosion losses : a guide to conservation planning , 1978 .

[11]  Wanhong Yang,et al.  Spatial Targeting of Conservation Tillage to Improve Water Quality and Carbon Retention Benefits , 2005 .

[12]  J. Thiere,et al.  Vergleich zweier Methoden zur Beurteilung der Wassererosionsgefährdung von Wassereinzugsgebieten , 1997 .

[13]  Hayri Önal,et al.  Integrating economic, environmental and GIS modeling to target cost effective land retirement in multiple watersheds , 2003 .

[14]  C. Grundmann.  Humboldt‐Universität Berlin , 1950 .

[15]  Peter Zander,et al.  Determination of trade-off-functions to analyse the provision of agricultural non-commodities , 2006 .