The study develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the allocation of conservation funds via selectively offering incentive payments to farmers for enrolling in one of two mutually exclusive agricultural conservation programs: retiring land from production or changing farming practices on land that remains in production. We investigate how the existence of a pre-fixed budget allocation between the programs affects the amounts of environmental benefits obtainable under alternative policy implementation schemes. The framework is applied to a major agricultural production region using field-scale data in conjunction with empirical models of land retirement and conservation tillage adoption, and a biophysical process simulation model for an array of environmental benefits.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/hongli-hennessy/9/
This is a working paper of an article from Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 52 (2006): 600–614, doi:10.1016/j.jeem.2006.03.004.