Heterogeneity in irrigators’ wtp and wta for water reliability

This paper is focused on the valuation of irrigation water supply reliability. We assess WTP and WTA for improvements and worsenings in irrigation water supply reliability, checking for the first time the disparity between average WTA and average WTP for this attribute of irrigation water supply. This assessment relies on a field experiment among farmers in an irrigated area located in southern Spain that is suffering a serious deterioration of water supply reliability because of climate change. Results obtained show average WTP estimates for moderate and significant improvements are €16.5 and €18.5/ha/year, respectively, while the average WTA estimates for moderate and significant worsenings are €765.6 and €881.1/ha/year. This indicates a very high WTA/WTP ratio of 46.4 and 47.6 for moderate and significant changes, much higher than those obtained in previous studies. Possible reasons which may explain such a disparity include reasons within neoclassical economic theory and endowment effects

Factors influencing farmers’ adoption of ecological reconversion agri-environmental schemes in mountain olive groves

Mountain olive groves are characterized by low profitability, mainly due to their location in high steep-slope areas with poor, shallow soils. Consequently, they present a high risk of abandonment of the productive activity, which would be eventually associated with high potential environmental and socio-cultural losses. As an alternative, an ecological reconversion scheme is proposed to increase the provision of ecosystem services from this agroecosystem while reducing the socio-economic impacts related to the abandonment. Two alternative schemes are proposed, which differ in the possibility or not of harvesting the olive production. A double-bounded contingent valuation exercise is used in a sample of Andalusian mountain olive growers to assess their willingness to accept (WTA) for participating in these schemes, using a difference-in-utility model with a linear utility function with correlation between the participation choices in the two schemes as econometric specification. The results show high levels of mean WTA, higher for the scheme precluding harvesting, indicating that higher levels of payment are needed to get some acceptance from farmers. Results also show that structural (e.g., yield) and attitudinal factors (e.g., opinion about setting-aside low productivity olive groves for environmental reasons), among others, significantly influence farmers’ WTA for these schemes

The design of agri-environmental schemes: Farmers preferences in southern Spain

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) play a key role in promoting the production of environmental public goods by European Union agriculture. Although extensive literature has analyzed AES, some important issues remain understudied. This paper performs an ex-ante assessment of AES in permanent cropping, analyzing several issues that have received little attention from researchers, such as ecological focus areas (EFA) and collective participation. For this purpose, a choice experiment was used to assess farmers&rsquo; preferences towards AES in a case study of olive groves in southern Spain. Results show high heterogeneity among farmers, with different classes being identified, from potential participants to non-participants. As regards EFA, almost half of the farmers would be willing to accept it for low monetary incentives (&euro;8-9/ha per additional 1% of the farmland devoted to EFA) while the rest would do it for moderate-to-high monetary incentives (&euro;41-151/ha per additional 1% of EFA). However, for a high share of EFA (e.g., 5-7%) higher incentives would presumably be required due to the intrinsic spatial restrictions of olive groves. With regard to collective participation, we find that it is unlikely that farmers would participate collectively with the incentive of the up-to-30% EU-wide bonus. These results are relevant for policy-making now when new AES are being designed for the next programming period 2014-2020.Los programas medioambientales son un instrumento clave para la provisi&oacute;n de bienes p&uacute;blicos de car&aacute;cter ambiental. En este trabajo utilizando los experimentos de elecci&oacute;n se determina el grado de adopci&oacute;n seg&uacute;n el tipo de sistema de olivar. Los resultados indican que casi la mitad de los olivareros estar&iacute;an dispuestos a dedicar el 2% a Superficie de Inter&eacute;s Ecol&oacute;gico (SIE) por reducidos incentivos monetarios. Para una adopci&oacute;n entre 5-7% se requerir&iacute;an elevados incentivos.</p

Precautionary savings as an instrument to hedge the risk of hydrological drought in irrigated agriculture

This paper explores the use of precautionary savings as a new risk management instrument that can be implemented to hedge hydrological drought risk in irrigated agriculture, a risk currently not covered by any policy instrument. For this purpose, the Drought Savings Account (DSA) is proposed as a personal savings account to which farmers make regular contributions, with withdrawals allowed in the event of irrigation water supply gaps in order to guarantee a minimum income. The implementation of the DSA is empirically assessed in a Mediterranean-climate irrigation district using an innovative simulation approach. Based on the results obtained, the DSA has proved to be a theoretically suitable policy instrument that can overcome the problems hindering the implementation of agricultural insurance, managing the risk in a more cost-effective way. This cost-effectiveness is a key advantage of precautionary savings over agricultural insurance, since the former instrument minimizes moral hazard and adverse selection problems, and the transaction costs of risk-sharing. Moreover, in this context, precautionary savings may play a significant role as an efficient climate change adaptation measure since the self-insurance strategy adopted does not distort the signals underlying farmers’ own risk exposure, leading to better individual assessment and an adequate management of water supply gaps

Factors explaining the adoption of risk management instruments in mediterranean irrigated agriculture

Agriculture is highly impacted by different sources of risk. There is a wide variety of management instruments that farmers can use to cover these risks. The objective of this paper is to analyze the explanatory variables for the simultaneous adoption of a large set of risk management instruments. The main innovation is the methodological approach: first, we apply a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify the groups of instruments whose adoption is correlated; second, we use multivariate probit models to analyze the influence of different factors on the simultaneous adoption of the instruments included in each cluster. Explanatory variables capture farmers’ socio-demographic features, perception of risks, risk aversion and subjective perception of past risk experience; farms’ technical-economic characteristics; and perception of local-level climate change. The results show that there are significant differences in the variables influencing the adoption of the risk management instruments. The findings provide useful information to support the decision-making process for three main stakeholders: farmers (optimal choice over the joint use of instruments), providers of agricultural risk management instruments (e.g., the design of new combinations of risk management instruments better targeted to distinct profiles of farmers), and policymakers (policy strategies aiming to promote better risk management within the agricultural sector)

Análisis de la demanda de bienes y servicios no comerciales procedentes de la actividad agraria: El caso del olivar de montaña andaluz

[EN] Agricultural multifunctionality is the recognition of the joint exercise of economic, environmental and social functions by this sector. In order to make this concept operative for the design of public policies, it is necessary to estimate the social demand for such functions. The main objective of this article is to present an empirical application in this line. For this purpose we have taken the agricultural system of mountain olive groves in Andalusia (Southern Spain) at risk of abandonment after the decoupling of the EU subsidies as a case study. The economic valuation technique used is the Choice Experiment. According to the results, there is a different contribution of each attribute to the improvement of the Society level of utility. Thus, and taking into account its WTP for each attribute, keeping rural population in their villages and fighting soil erosion seem to be the most valued functions by Andalusian citizens. It follows the improvement of the visual quality of the rural landscapes and the reduction of food residuals. Finally, although the results suggest a significant demand for the different functions, this demand is heterogeneous, depending on the socio-economic characteristics of the individuals.[ES] El concepto de multifuncionalidad agraria supone el reconocimiento de la provisión conjunta de bienes y servicios de tipo económico, social y medioambiental. Con el objeto de hacer operativo este concepto para el diseño de políticas públicas es necesario estimar la demanda social de estas funciones. En este contexto, el presente trabajo supone una aplicación empírica de esta idea teniendo como caso de estudio el olivar andaluz de montaña. La valoración económica de las funciones no comerciales más relevantes de este sistema agrario se ha llevado a cabo utilizando los experimentos de elección. Según los resultados obtenidos, existe una contribución al bienestar social de cada uno de los atributos analizados, siendo el mantenimiento de la población en el medio rural y la lucha contra la erosión los dos atributos mejor valorados, seguidos por la provisión de un paisaje de calidad y la seguridad alimentaria. Por último, estos mismos resultados evidencian igualmente cómo esta valoración es heterogénea, dependiendo de las características socioeconómicas de los individuos.Kallas, Z.; Gómez-Limón, J.; Arriaza, M.; Nekhay, O. (2006). Demand for non-commodities outputs from agricultural activities: The case of mountain olive groves. Economía Agraria y Recursos Naturales - Agricultural and Resource Economics. 6(11):49-79. doi:10.7201/earn.2006.11.03SWORD497961

Derechos prioritarios de agua: ¿son una opción adecuada para la asignación de agua durante periodos de sequía?

Este trabajo examina la conveniencia de reformar la asignación de agua en el sector del regadío, reemplazando el actual sistema de asignación basado en la regla proporcional por la implementación de una regla de prioridad que establezca derechos de agua diferenciados por su grado de garantía de suministro. El objetivo principal consiste en evaluar si este cambio en los derechos de agua puede considerarse una alternativa razonable a los mercados de agua con el fin de mejorar la eficiencia económica de la asignación del agua durante situaciones de escasez coyuntural a nivel de comunidad de regantes. Para ello, se construye un modelo de programación matemática para poder simular el desempeño de la reforma propuesta en una comunidad de regantes del sur de España. Los resultados muestran que las ganancias de eficiencia provocadas por este cambio en el sistema de asignación son muy pequeñas. Por tanto, este instrumento de gestión de la demanda no puede considerarse como un sustitutivo adecuado de los mercados de agua

Dust environment and dynamical history of a sample of short-period comets: II. 81P/Wild 2 and 103P/Hartley 2

Aims. This paper is a continuation of the first paper in this series, where we presented an extended study of the dust environment of a sample of short-period comets and their dynamical history. On this occasion, we focus on comets 81P/Wild 2 and 103P/Hartley 2, which are of special interest as targets of the spacecraft missions Stardust and EPOXI. Methods. As in the previous study, we used two sets of observational data: a set of images, acquired at Sierra Nevada and Lulin observatories, and the Afρ data as a function of the heliocentric distance provided by the amateur astronomical association Cometas-Obs. The dust environment of comets (dust loss rate, ejection velocities, and size distribution of the particles) was derived from our Monte Carlo dust tail code. To determine their dynamical history we used the numerical integrator Mercury 6.2 to ascertain the time spent by these objects in the Jupiter family Comet region. Results. From the dust analysis, we conclude that both 81P/Wild 2 and 103P/Hartley 2 are dusty comets, with an annual dust production rate of 2.8 × 109 kg yr-1 and (0.4-1.5) × 109 kg yr-1, respectively. From the dynamical analysis, we determined their time spent in the Jupiter family Comet region as ~40 yr in the case of 81P/Wild 2 and ~1000 yr for comet 103P/Hartley 2. These results imply that 81P/Wild 2 is the youngest and the most active comet of the eleven short-period comets studied so far, which tends to favor the correlation between the time spent in JFCs region and the comet activity previously discussed

Análisis de instrumentos políticos para el control de la contaminación por nitratos de la agricultura de regadío en Castilla y León (España)

Irrigated agriculture is one of the most important sources of nitrate pollution of water resources. For this reason, during the past decade, various policies have been proposed in order to prevent this negative impact of farming activities. The aim of this work is therefore to analyze the effects of the joint application of the last Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) reform with different policy instruments designed to mitigate nitrate pollution. To this end, models based on Positive Mathematical Programming have been developed to enable simulating irrigators' productive behaviour in the event of the implementation of these instruments. The results indicate that the latest CAP reform (partial decoupling of subsidies) will by itself lead to an important reduction in nitrate pollution. If this reduction is not regarded as being sufficient, other specific policy instruments could further reduce this source of pollution. In this sense, the most suitable one could be the application of nitrogen fertilization quotas.La agricultura de regadío es una de las principales fuentes de contaminación por nitratos de los recursos hídricos. Por este motivo en los últimos años han surgido diferentes políticas encaminadas a evitar esta externalidad negativa de la actividad agraria. En este sentido, el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar los efectos de la aplicación conjunta de la última reforma de la Política Agraria Común (PAC) y diferentes instrumentos políticos mitigadores de la contaminación por nitratos. Para ello se han empleado modelos de simulación basados en la programación matemática positiva, los cuales permiten simular el comportamiento productivo de los regantes frente a la hipotética implementación de tales instrumentos. Los resultados obtenidos ponen de manifiesto que esta externalidad negativa va a reducirse de forma significativa gracias a la última reforma de la PAC (desacoplamiento parcial de las ayudas). Si esta reducción no se considerase suficiente, otros instrumentos específicos permitirían una reducción adicional de esta fuente de contaminación. En este sentido el instrumento que puede resultar más adecuado es el establecimiento de límites máximos a la fertilización nitrogenada