Agroforestry is paying off – Economic evaluation of ecosystem services in European landscapes with and without agroforestry systems

Sonja Kay, Anil Graves, João H.N. Palma, Gerardo Moreno, José V. Roces-Díaz, Stéphanie Aviron, Dimitrios Chouvardas, Josep Crous-Duran, Nuria Ferreiro-Domínguez, Silvestre García de Jalón, Vlad Măcicăşan, María Rosa Mosquera-Losada, Anastasia Pantera, Jose Javier Santiago-Freijanes, Erich Szerencsits, Mario Torralba, Paul J. Burgess and Felix Herzog

Ecosystem Services, 2019, vol. 36, issue C, -

Abstract: The study assessed the economic performance of marketable ecosystem services (ES) (biomass production) and non-marketable ecosystem services and dis-services (groundwater, nutrient loss, soil loss, carbon sequestration, pollination deficit) in 11 contrasting European landscapes dominated by agroforestry land use compared to business as usual agricultural practice. The productivity and profitability of the farming activities and the associated ES were quantified using environmental modelling and economic valuation. After accounting for labour and machinery costs the financial value of the outputs of Mediterranean agroforestry systems tended to be greater than the corresponding agricultural system; but in Atlantic and Continental regions the agricultural system tended to be more profitable. However, when economic values for the associated ES were included, the relative profitability of agroforestry increased. Agroforestry landscapes: (i) were associated to reduced externalities of pollution from nutrient and soil losses, and (ii) generated additional benefits from carbon capture and storage and thus generated an overall higher economic gain. Our findings underline how a market system that includes the values of broader ES would result in land use change favouring multifunctional agroforestry. Imposing penalties for dis-services or payments for services would reflect their real world prices and would make agroforestry a more financially profitable system.

Keywords: Biomass production; Carbon storage; Soil loss; External cost; Nutrient loss; Pollination deficit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041618301414
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecoser:v:36:y:2019:i:c:4

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.100896

Access Statistics for this article

Ecosystem Services is currently edited by Leon C Braat

More articles in Ecosystem Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().