Productivity and Erodibility of U.S. Cropland

Ralph E. Heimlich

No 308067, Agricultural Economic Reports from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Soil erosion policy aiming to remove highly erodible land from production to reduce soil erosion may be dealing with some of the most productive and valuable U.S. cropland. If so, greater incentives for farmers to retire that land may be needed. The land capability classification system and USDA's prime farmland definition, used to measure the suitability of land for agricultural uses, do not provide enough information for decisions on whether highly erodible soils are less or more productive than less erodible soils. As a result, some highly erodible lands that are also highly productive may have higher opportunity costs than commonly thought and thus may need greater incentives for retirement. Opportunity costs measure the earning power of an input, soil in this case, in its best alternative use.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Crop Production/Industries; Land Economics/Use; Production Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 1989-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/308067/files/aer604.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:uerser:308067

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.308067

Access Statistics for this paper

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