ADDITIONALITY AND THE ADOPTION OF FARM CONSERVATION PRACTICES

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/20/11.Conservation programs, matching estimators, additionality, average treatment effects, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Essays on the Effectiveness of Environmental Conservation and Water Management Policies

An awareness of the effect of agricultural production on the environment has led to the development of policies to mitigate its adverse effects. This dissertation provides analyses of agri-environmental policies designed to protect environmental assets, as well as analytical decision-making tools useful for conducting policy evaluations. The first essay employs propensity score matching techniques to estimate the additionality of federal agricultural conservation programs for six conservation practices for farmers in Ohio. Additionality is an important measure of the effectiveness of conservation programs in inducing an increase in the conservation effort of farmers. Results suggest that additionality is positive and statistically significant for all six conservation practices. However, while programs achieve positive additionality for all practice types, a comparison between conservation practices reveals that certain practice types achieve higher percent additionality than others. Such results, coupled with information on the environmental benefits obtained per practice, could prove useful to program managers for improving the effectiveness of conservation programs. The second essay develops a new methodology to decompose the additionality measure into the two effects induced by conservation programs: expansion versus the new adoption of conservation practices. To do so, the relative contributions of two types of farmers, prior-adopters and new-adopters, are estimated. Results of the decomposition reveal that the additionality for prior-adopters is not significant for all practice types. Instead, additional conservation effort comes from new-adopters adopting new practices. Second, decomposition estimates suggest that practice types with a greater fraction of enrolled farmers that are new-adopters achieve greater percent additionality than those with greater proportions of prior-adopters. This suggests that a farmers? history in conservation adoption has a significant influence on additionality levels. The final essay analyzes the effect of recent instream flow diversion-guidelines on agricultural water security and streamflows within a decentralized water management regime. Spatially-explicit economic and hydrologic models are integrated to evaluate the tradeoffs between salmon bypass-flows and agricultural water security for three different diversion-guidelines within a northern-California watershed. Results indicate that the most restrictive diversion-guideline provides the greatest protection of bypass-flow days within smaller watersheds; however, within larger watersheds protection is not as significant. Water security, however, decreases sharply under the strict and moderate diversion-guidelines, especially during dry years. Overall, results indicate that greater focus should be given to protecting streamflows in the smallest watersheds, and meeting human water needs during dry years, when agricultural water security is impacted the most

Agricultural Water Security and Instream Flows for Endangered Salmonids in Coastal California's Watersheds

Many rural landowners within the Western United States do not have access to a secure water supply provided by a major dam or an irrigation district. Such water users must rely instead on groundwater pumping and/or seasonal water flows from tributaries. Some of these agricultural producers choose to store winter stream flows from tributaries within onsite reservoirs to secure their spring/summer water needs. However, regulatory agencies have increased restrictions on surface water storage and diversions to improve instream flows for endangered salmon, thus reducing water security for many landowners not located along the main stem. The majority of salmon habitat is within the tributaries located throughout a watershed. Most research regarding instream flows and water management, however, has focused on the main stem portion of a watershed and not on its tributaries. Such a focus ignores the important fact that most landowners are found off the main stem. Consequently, effective water management policies aimed at improving water security and salmon survivorship must focus on the main stem and the tributaries within a watershed. Our current research focuses on both of these critical areas. We Develop a spatially explicit economic model to analyze the demand for additional onsite storage with and without the existing regulatory restrictions. Using this model, we are able to determine which landowners have unmet demands for onsite storage versus those who prefer to pump groundwater, and thus would not request an appropriative water right for storage, even in the absence of a policy restriction

ADDITIONALITY AND THE ADOPTION OF FARM CONSERVATION PRACTICES

We use propensity score matching to estimate the level of additionality from enrollment in federal cost-share programs for six agricultural conservation practices. We analyze farmer conservation adoption decisions based on survey data of farmers in southwest Ohio. We also develop a new methodological approach to decompose the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) according to the relative contributions of adopters and non-adopters. Our results indicate that enrollment in federal conservation programs achieves positive and significant levels of additionality for each of the six practices. But the percent additionality varies dramatically between practices types. Specifically, the percent additionality is highest for filter strips (92.0%), hayfields (91.0%), and cover crops (86.7%), while it is lowest for conservation tillage (18.0%)

Agricultural Water Security and Instream Flows for Endangered Salmonids in Coastal California's Watersheds

Many rural landowners within the Western United States do not have access to a secure water supply provided by a major dam or an irrigation district. Such water users must rely instead on groundwater pumping and/or seasonal water flows from tributaries. Some of these agricultural producers choose to store winter stream flows from tributaries within onsite reservoirs to secure their spring/summer water needs. However, regulatory agencies have increased restrictions on surface water storage and diversions to improve instream flows for endangered salmon, thus reducing water security for many landowners not located along the main stem. The majority of salmon habitat is within the tributaries located throughout a watershed. Most research regarding instream flows and water management, however, has focused on the main stem portion of a watershed and not on its tributaries. Such a focus ignores the important fact that most landowners are found off the main stem. Consequently, effective water management policies aimed at improving water security and salmon survivorship must focus on the main stem and the tributaries within a watershed. Our current research focuses on both of these critical areas. We Develop a spatially explicit economic model to analyze the demand for additional onsite storage with and without the existing regulatory restrictions. Using this model, we are able to determine which landowners have unmet demands for onsite storage versus those who prefer to pump groundwater, and thus would not request an appropriative water right for storage, even in the absence of a policy restriction.instream flow, salmon, endangered species, water, watershed, Environmental Economics and Policy,