Economic Benefits of Agricultural Conservation

Agricultural conservation provides a variety of public goods in the form of ecosystem services, such as improvement in water quality. The implementation of conservation practices may mitigate climate-related risks. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a working agricultural land program in the United States, offers financial and technical support to farmers and ranchers who voluntarily adopt conservation practices. We estimate the economic benefits of EQIP in the rural housing markets of the US. The results suggest that the implementation of agricultural conservation projects increases local housing prices and that the improvement in environmental amenities is mostly capitalized by houses located within 25 miles. We study the effects of EQIP on agricultural production and land value. We find that a 10% increase in EQIP payments made in the previous two years is projected to increase corn yield by 0.03 bushel per acre at the county level in the US. A 10% increase in the previous year's EQIP payments for no-till practices is shown to increase wheat yield by 0.02 bushel per acre and decrease corn yield by 0.02 bushel per acre. We analyze the effects of conservation practices on acreage loss and farm loss. The results indicate that climate-smart payments have statistically significant effects on loss acres and loss cost ratios, such that a 10% increase in the previous year's and previous two years' climate-smart payments would reduce the loss acres of corn by four and seven acres, respectively. Moreover, a 10% increase in the previous year's climate-smart payments would reduce the loss cost ratios of corn by 0.02 percentage point, and the loss cost ratios of soybean by 0.01 percentage point.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics, Agriculture and Life Sciences

Department dc:contributor.department

Economics

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Li, Yanggu

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Zhang, Wei

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Stephenson, Stephen K.
• Chen, Zhenshan
• Bosch, Darrell J.

• Agricultural Production
• Best Management Practices
• Climate Change
• Environmental Quality Incentives Program
• Public Goods

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:41813

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/123917