Additionality in U.S. Agricultural Conservation and Regulatory Offset Programs

Roger Claassen, Eric Duquette, John Horowitz and Ueda Kohei

No 180414, Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Conservation payments lead to improvement in environmental quality only if farmers and ranchers who receive them adopt conservation practices that would not have been adopted without the payment. When a voluntary payment causes a change in practice(s) that lead(s) to improved environmental quality, these changes are “additional.” We estimate this “additionality” for a number of common conservation practices that are frequently supported by existing conservation programs. We find that the level of additionality varies by practice and that additionality is high for structural and vegetative practices while the risk of nonadditionality appears to be higher for management practices. While the risk of nonadditionality cannot be completely eliminated, it can be reduced. We discuss a number of approaches to managing nonadditionality in both conservation programs and environmental offset programs.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Environmental Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 81
Date: 2014-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/180414/files/ERR170.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uersrr:180414

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.180414

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Research Report from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().