A micro-simulation evaluation of the effectiveness of an Irish grass roots agri-environmental scheme

• Autores: Hugh Kelley, T.M. van Rensburg, Lava Yadav
• Localización: Land use policy: The International Journal Covering All Aspects of Land Use, ISSN 0264-8377, ISSN-e 1873-5754, Nº. 31, 2013, págs. 182-195
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Agri-environmental schemes designed to induce agricultural producers to provide environmental public goods must increasingly justify exchequer costs. This requires comparing the non-market value of amenity externalities with government expenditures. We employ a preference calibrated microsimulation model to analyze the economic viability of a grass roots agri-environment scheme in the West of Ireland. We also simulate the land-use response of individual producers to variations in program funding and market conditions. Our results indicate that heterogeneous preferences crucially influence producers´ decisions to provide environmental public goods; producers are highly sensitive to market and policy incentives, in particular to semi-organic product price premia, off-farm labor market conditions, and subsidy payments; and finally, even in the most unfavorable simulated market conditions, support payments provide a rate of return exceeding 71% and in current conditions provide returns as high as 185%.