Synthesizing evidence in the economics of farm environmental biodiversity
Lead Research Organisation:
Durham University
Department Name: Economics
Abstract
Modern agriculture is vital to ensuring food security, but changes to the landscape due to intensive farming put ecosystems under stress. Natural landscapes provide many vital services: Wood- and shrubland can mitigate flooding by reducing surface runoff following heavy rains. They provide habitats for insects that pollinate our orchards and gardens, and animals that support thriving river ecosystems.
Effective agri-environmental policies are needed to ensure the sometimes opposing but crucially important goals of sustaining productive agriculture while maintaining landscape biodiversity and ecosystem services are met. The planned reform of UK agricultural policies following Brexit should support these goals while wrestling with the consequences for the sector from leaving the single market and the growing threat of climate change.
This research project focuses on factoring biodiversity values and designing cost-effective spatially targeted agri-environmental schemes. It achieves this by focusing on farmers' commitment to supporting ecosystem services where they have the most significant impact. We use data-driven tools to estimate the multifunctional value of natural landscapes and design contracts that support both biodiversity and flood management. By providing schemes that encourage and reward farmers for collaborating with their neighbours to maximize habitat gains from relatively small individual commitments, we propose ways to limit the costs to the sector and ensure the greatest return on future public spending.
Effective agri-environmental policies are needed to ensure the sometimes opposing but crucially important goals of sustaining productive agriculture while maintaining landscape biodiversity and ecosystem services are met. The planned reform of UK agricultural policies following Brexit should support these goals while wrestling with the consequences for the sector from leaving the single market and the growing threat of climate change.
This research project focuses on factoring biodiversity values and designing cost-effective spatially targeted agri-environmental schemes. It achieves this by focusing on farmers' commitment to supporting ecosystem services where they have the most significant impact. We use data-driven tools to estimate the multifunctional value of natural landscapes and design contracts that support both biodiversity and flood management. By providing schemes that encourage and reward farmers for collaborating with their neighbours to maximize habitat gains from relatively small individual commitments, we propose ways to limit the costs to the sector and ensure the greatest return on future public spending.
Organisations
| Description | Our DCEs reveal that the location of the natural features is considered more important than the quality of land retired. Respondents require, on average, £232 less compensation per year when offered a scheme with features along field boundaries compared within the middle of fields; and £271 less per year with features along river edges. Comparatively, high-quality land (high-yield cropland, prime grazing) is only valued at £36 per year over low-quality land. Controlling for location, land quality, and feature type, the average marginal compensation required to retire land is £1.80 per square metre. Participation in a real AES is associated with lower costs and a higher likelihood of opting into our proposed schemes than a status quo alternative. Similarly, higher educational attainment lowers the barrier to uptake by £212 to £359 annually, depending on education level. As expected, coordinating with two neighbours was perceived as more costly than no coordination. However, the estimated shift in required compensation was smaller than expected, with no significant preference for no coordination requirements over coordination with only one neighbour. The average respondent required more compensation (£157 per year) to consider a scheme requiring wider corridors (20m over 10m), as well as features of planted trees over natural regeneration (£117). Self-rated community participation (assessed with a Likert scale rating respondents' degree of social engagement in the local community) was not very influential. Instead, sharing farm equipment with neighbouring farmers made respondents more willing to opt into the scheme. These results indicate that, unlike the scheme without collaboration, willingness to coordinate to improve habitat connectivity is not driven by general ties to the community but by lower coordination costs from having previously collaborated with individual farmer neighbours. A maximum entropy model was run on occurrence data for the Western honeybee based on the following predictors: Monthly maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation, land use categories, distance to rivers and streams, population density, and air pollution. The raster resolution was 25m, and data for 2019 were used. Land use produces the best prediction on its own and reduces accuracy the most when left out of the model. Farmland is considerably less suitable to the species than broadleaved woodland and acid grassland. Urban- and semi-urban uses are also identified as suitable, but lose some significance when controlling for population density. This could be attributed to higher sampling intensity in populated urbanised areas. These results indicate converting arable farmland to broadleaved (planted) woodland or grassland. |
| Exploitation Route | Further analysis can be conducted on the survey data to test a variety of additional behavioural hypotheses. The ensuing models can be used to evaluate the willingness of farmers to be compensated to undertake various roles in participative programs. |
| Sectors | Agriculture Food and Drink Environment |
| Description | I presented two seminars and one workshop on the findings of the research. One was at the Durham Agricultural Society, which is a group of agricultural enthusiasts and practitioners that meets at one of Durham University's Colleges. The second was at the farmer's association in Durham County, the workshop was held in rural Northumberland at Wingates Common Hall. All presentations focussed on the effects of neighbouring farms' cooperation in providing biodiversity services at different local scales and on pollinators. I am told that some initiatives of beekeeping have begun as a consequence of these events, especially in rural Northumberland, as well as the rewilding of land strips along rural roads. A PhD student, Daniel Leppert, has based two chapters of his PhD thesis on the collected data and has recently submitted the thesis for examination. In his PhD thesis, he has explored how a water runoff permit market can be spatially targeted and how coordination costs between farmers affect spatial targeting in a voluntary setting. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2024 |
| Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Environment |
| Impact Types | Societal Economic |
| Title | Stated choices of hypothetical land management schemes from 348 farmers in the north of England and associated socio-economic covariates, 2022 |
| Description | This dataset contains responses from an online choice experiment with associated socio-economic covariates on the topic of environmental land management schemes. Sample: 348 farmers based in the north of England in 2022. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| URL | https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/1409404f-564f-43c5-81dd-00339a674dc8 |