Does crop rotation with legumes provide an efficient means to reduce nutrient loads and GHG emissions?

Sanna Lötjönen () and Markku Ollikainen
Additional contact information
Sanna Lötjönen: University of Helsinki
Markku Ollikainen: University of Helsinki

Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, 2017, vol. 98, issue 4, No 3, 283-312

Abstract: Abstract We investigate crop rotation with legumes from economic and environmental perspectives by asking how effective they are at providing profits and reducing nutrient runoff and greenhouse gas emissions compared with monoculture cultivation. We study this effectiveness in three alternative policy regimes: the free market optimum, the Finnish agri-environmental scheme, and socially optimal cultivation, and also design policy instruments to achieve the socially optimal outcomes in land use and fertilization. We first develop an analytical model to describe crop rotation and the role of legumes, and examine its implications for water and climate policies. Drawing on Finnish agricultural data, we then use numerical simulations and show that shifting from monoculture cultivation to crop rotation with legumes provides economically and environmentally better outcomes. Crop rotation with legumes also reduces the variability in profits caused by stochastic weather. The optimal instruments implementing the social optimum depend on nutrient and climate damage (nitrogen tax), as well as carbon sequestration and nutrient reduction benefits (buffer strip subsidy).

Keywords: Crop rotation; Greenhouse gas emissions; Legumes; Nutrient loads (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q18 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41130-018-0063-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:roafes:v:98:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s41130-018-0063-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... nomics/journal/41130

DOI: 10.1007/s41130-018-0063-z

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies is currently edited by Stephan Marette and Ronan Le Velly

More articles in Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().