Climate change abatement and farm profitability analyses across agricultural environments

Nikki P. Dumbrell, Marit Kragt, Jody Biggs, Elizabeth Meier and Peter Thorburn

No 225674, Working Papers from University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: Management practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from farms or increase on-farm carbon storage can contribute to climate change mitigation. Farmers, however, are only likely to adopt new management practices if they contribute to farm profitability. We use the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) to simulate how different cropping practices contribute to greenhouse gas abatement at case study farms in different grain growing regions across Australia. The APSIM simulations were subsequently used to calculate farm gross margins and conduct whole-farm economic modelling to estimate the costs of abatement under different management practices. Integrating detailed biophysical and economic analyses enables us to demonstrate the difference in potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across agricultural environments. We show this for two case study farms in different grain growing regions, where we found both positive and negative relationships between greenhouse gas abatement and profitability for the management practices. This diversity in potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across agricultural environments must be recognised in order to understand the role agriculture can play in climate change mitigation, and understand the implications of any potential future changes to include the industry in carbon pricing policies.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Crop Production/Industries; Environmental Economics and Policy; Farm Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2015-11-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene and nep-env
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwauwp:225674

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.225674

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