Investigating Impacts of Alternative Crop Market Scenarios on Land Use Change with an Agent-Based Model

Deng Ding, David Bennett and Silvia Secchi
Additional contact information
Deng Ding: Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences, University of Iowa, 316 Jessup Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
David Bennett: Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences, University of Iowa, 316 Jessup Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA

Land, 2015, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-28

Abstract: We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate farmers’ decisions on crop type and fertilizer application in response to commodity and biofuel crop prices. Farm profit maximization constrained by farmers’ profit expectations for land committed to biofuel crop production was used as the decision rule. Empirical parameters characterizing farmers’ profit expectations were derived from an agricultural landowners and operators survey and integrated in the ABM. The integration of crop production cost models and the survey information in the ABM is critical to producing simulations that can provide realistic insights into agricultural land use planning and policy making. Model simulations were run with historical market prices and alternative market scenarios for corn price, soybean to corn price ratio, switchgrass price, and switchgrass to corn stover ratio. The results of the comparison between simulated cropland percentage and crop rotations with satellite-based land cover data suggest that farmers may be underestimating the effects that continuous corn production has on yields. The simulation results for alternative market scenarios based on a survey of agricultural land owners and operators in the Clear Creek Watershed in eastern Iowa show that farmers see cellulosic biofuel feedstock production in the form of perennial grasses or corn stover as a more risky enterprise than their current crop production systems, likely because of market and production risks and lock in effects. As a result farmers do not follow a simple farm-profit maximization rule.

Keywords: agent-based model; land use change; agricultural land owners and operators survey; commodity and biofuel crop market scenarios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1110/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/4/4/1110/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:4:y:2015:i:4:p:1110-1137:d:59333

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().